Who doesn’t love a ball pit? With the Feelings Ball Pit you can bring all the fun of a ball pit to older kids and teach them about their feelings at the same time. Depending on how you play, you can help kids to explore all five components of the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique.

Supplies for Making a Feelings Ball Pit

• You will need standard ball pit balls. You can get them on Amazon, but they can be pricey. We got ours on the Wish app for significantly less (they took longer to get here, but it’s worth it for the savings if you plan ahead).
• Markers
• A container large enough to be the pit for the ball pit. It doesn’t have to be large enough that you can actually climb in (that would be fun), but it should be large enough to allow kids to dig through the balls.
• A set of our Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards (for Versions #1 & #2 of the game below).
• A set of our Super Simple Feelings Management Technique Activity Cards (for Versions #2 & #3 of the game below).
• A set of our I Feel Scenario Cards (for Version #3 of the game below)

Preparing the Game and Setting Up to Play

• Write the name of an emotion on each ball. Make multiple copies of each emotion. You can use whatever emotions you would like for this game, but make sure you include all 54 emotions included in the Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards.
• Put the balls in the pit at one of end of the room.
• Have the players stand at the other end of the room with a bucket or container for each player or team.

How to Play

There are several different games you can play once you have your Feelings Ball Pit all set up.

• Version #1: A card is drawn from the Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards deck. The first player to find that emotion on a ball in the ball pit and bring it back to the starting point scores a point. First team to a pre-selected number of points wins.
• Version #2: Each player draws a card of their own from the Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards deck. They must run to the ball pit and find that emotion and bring it back and dump it in their bucket. They then draw another card and repeat. The team with the most balls in their bucket at the end of a pre-selected amount of time wins. The losing team must draw a Super Simple Feelings Management Technique Activity Card for each emotion in their bucket and do the activity on the card or answer the question on the card.
• Version #3: Each player draws a card of their own from the I Feel Scenario Cards deck. They must run to the ball pit and find an appropriate emotion that they might feel given the scenario on their card. They then draw another card and repeat. The team with the most balls in their bucket at the end of a pre-selected amount of time wins. The losing team must draw a Super Simple Feelings Management Technique Activity Card for each emotion in their bucket and do the activity on the card or answer the question on the card.

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Active coping skills are an important part of Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff Coping Tool Box. The Over and Under Obstacle Course is a fun way to help kids deal with difficult emotions and can be a powerful visual reminder that life events can be like an obstacle course. There will be ups and downs, but the most important thing is to keep going.

Setting Up Your Obstacle Course

• Use you imagination. Your obstacle course can be inside or outside.
• If you’re building inside, use furniture, cushions, blankets, doors and anything else you can think of to use.
• These obstacle course also work in an education setting. Use desks, books, doors and other items in the room.
• If you’re working outside, use playground equipment, toys, sporting equipment, leaves, creeks, etc. to build your course.
• Try to make your course doable but make sure it requires some effort on the child’s part.

Using Your Obstacle Course to Reinforce Emotional Resilience

• Run the obstacle course with the child.
• Time the child and see if they can improve on their time.
• When you are finished with the course, discuss with the child how, like the course, life is not always easy. Ask them how they dealt with the obstacles on the course. Talk about other obstacles in their life and how they can deal with those obstacles.

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The Emotions Spoon Race is a fun and active way to help kids to better understand their emotions. It combines all the fun a traditional egg on spoons relay race with an improved emotional vocabulary and awareness. Make sure to check out our video from the first time we played this game at the bottom of this post.

What You’ll Need for the Emotions Spoon Race

• A package of ping-pong balls. We actually used balls which don’t officially qualify as ping-pong balls. They’re a lot cheaper and actually easier to write on. We used white ping-pong balls this time, but I also bought a package of colored ones.
• A bucket or container for the ping-pong balls.
• A listing of emotion words. We selected 68 words to include. A listing of those words is can be found here.
• A fine tip marker to write on the balls.
• Spoons
• Hula Hoops, buckets or something else to collect the balls the racers carry.
• A copy of our Super Simple Feelings Management Technique Activity Cards.

Setting Up the Emotions Spoon Race

• Write the names of various emotions on the ping-pong balls. We chose to include two balls with each emotion.
• Put all of the balls in a bucket on one end of the room.
• Line up the hula hoops (or whatever else you are using on the other end of the room).
• Shuffle the Super Simple Feelings Management Technique Activity Cards (or sort them by color if you wish).

Playing The Emotions Spoon Race

• Give each child a spoon and have them line up by the bucket of ping-pong balls.
• Set a timer.
• The kids must pick up a ball with their spoon (no hands allowed at any point) and carry the ball down to their hula hoop.
• If they touch the ball with their hand at any point or drop it off the spoon, they must pick it up, return the ball to the bucket and pick up a new ball.
• They must drop the ball in the hula hoop. If it bounces or rolls out of the hula hoop, it does not count.
• When time is up, have the children count the balls in their hula hoop. The child with the most emotion balls win. Keep track of all the places.
• Have the child in 1st place randomly keep one ball from their hula hoop, 2nd place keep 2 balls, 3rd place 3 balls, etc.
• Have the child take turns choosing from the balls they kept, picking a card from the
• Super Simple Feelings Management Technique Activity Cards and doing the activity (or answering the question on the card) for the emotion they selected.

Alternative Ways to Play

• If you have a larger group of kids, consider playing in teams. One child picks the ball out of the bucket. They must carry the ball to the hand off point then put the ball into the second players’ spoon without using their hands.
• Tape a line on the floor several feet before the hula hoops. Instead of having the children drop the balls in the hula hoop, they must throw the balls into the hula hoop using their spoons. Any balls that do not land in the hula hoop do not count.
• Read scenarios from the I Feel Scenario Cards. Children must find an emotion in the bucket that matches the scenario and carry that ball to the hula hoop.

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The Row Row Row Your Boat Emotion Game is a fun way to talk to kids about emotions and what they sound like. It can be a valuable tool in the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique for See It, Say It and Mimic It. Here’s how it works:

1. Use a set of emotion cards, an emotion chart or just your own imagination to throw out an emotion to another player.
2. The player must hum the song Row Row Row your boat sounding like the emotion given.
3. Laugh and have fun.

It’s that simple! You can use whatever song you want, but we selected Row Row Row Your Boat as a song that virtually everyone knows. A fun game to play if you have a deck of emotion cards (the Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion cards are coming soon) would be to have the player select the emotion then have the other plays guess the emotion being hummed. You could also have the player pick the song they will be doing and have other player name both the emotion and the song. Break into teams and see how many each team can get in a given amount of time.

Credit to my 10-year-old Nathan who helped me come up with this game over dinner after soccer practice. Here’s a little video we made demonstrating the game. Please forgive the poor sound quality – it’s the best we could get with a phone and sitting at Arby’s!

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These Super Simple Feelings Management Technique Activity Cards are based on Hope 4 Hurting Kids’ Super Simple Feelings Management Technique to help with emotional understanding and regulation. They are designed to be used with a variety of emotions listings of games (see a partial list above) to help young people master the five skills involved in the  Super Simple Feelings Management Technique:

1. See It!
2. Say It!
3. Feel It!
4. Mimic It!
5. Talk About It!

There are nine cards for each of the five components that will help young people to better recognize, understand and talk about their emotions. The pdf file also includes a set of blank cards if you wish to add your own activities to the pile.

How To Play

• The game is simple. Have the child pick an emotion from any source or even think of their own (a list of potential games and activities for identifying emotions is included below).
• Pick a card and have the child act out or discuss what is indicated on the card for the given emotion.

Activities and Sources of Emotions for Game

• My Feelings Workbook
• Fidget Spinner Emotions
• Bottle Flip Emotions
• Emotions Jenga
• Emotion Color Swatches
• Leave the Room
• Feelings Pong
• Emotional Animals Dice
• The Feelings Beach Ball

Click here or on the picture above to access the complete set of cards as well as a blank set that you can use to create your own activities.

The Emotion Mix Up Game is a fun way to really get kids and young people thinking about emotion by having them imagine what it would look like to have a less obvious emotion in reaction to a particular circumstance. Although it is similar to the Feelings Ball Toss game, it adds a fun twist that will get kids thinking about their emotions and the scenarios that cause them.

Here’s What You Need:

• Last week we looked at the Feelings Ball Toss / Emotions Sorting activity. You’ll use the colored bowls and the balls from that game.
• You will use a set of the Scenario Cards (I Feel) sorted by color. The colors will hopefully match the color of the bowls. If not, you can improvise.

Here’s How To Play:

• Line up the bowls from Feelings Ball Toss / Emotions Sorting against a wall.
• Have the children line up (assuming a group of kids) and take turns trying to throw a ball into any bucket.
• If they miss, move on to the next child. If they make it, have them say the emotion associated with the bowl they landed in.
• Select the top card from the I Feel…Scenario Cards and read it aloud inserting the name of the emotion of the bowl landed in.
• The child has to act out the scenario using the given emotion.

You will get some natural pairings like “My friend tells a lie about me” and “Mad” or “I just got the best present ever” and “Happy.” The real fun happens when you get “unnatural” pairings like “We go on vacation tomorrow to Florida” and “Sad” or “A spider just jumped onto my head” and “Joyful.”

A word of warning: there are some particularly intense scenarios included in the I Feel…Scenario Cards which don’t fit with this more lighthearted game. You will likely want to exclude from the deck before playing this game or “edit as you go.” For example, this game does not lend itself well to scenarios like “My Mom and Dad are getting a divorce” and “My Grandfather just died last week.”

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Feelings Ball Toss is a fun activity to play with kids to help them understand different emotions. The great part about the game is that it can be played a number of different ways.

Here’s How To Set It Up

• Get a series of bowls or tubs. We used the different colored bowls shown about that we got at Dollar Tree for a buck a piece.
• Label each bowl with a different emotions. You can write the emotion or draw a picture using marker, but we opted to print various emojis and tape them inside the bowls.
• Get some sort of soft ball or object that can be tossed into the bowls. We bought a set of 12 puffer balls on amazon that we use for the game. In addition to not bouncing and rolling as much as regular balls, they’re also a nice stress reliever for the kids.
• Set the bowls on one side of the room (up against a wall works well as a makeshift backboard).
• Have the kids stand at the other side of the room with a ball.

Here’s How to Play

• Use the Hope 4 Hurting Kids “I Feel…” Scenario Cards. Have the child select an “I feel” card and read it out loud.
• Have the child try to throw the ball into the bucket that corresponds to the emotion they would feel in the given scenario.
• Have the child explain why they would feel that way. Keep mind that there are no wrong answers, and if the child comes up with a wild explanation of why a certain situation would make them feel sad or afraid or whatever bucket they land in, that’s ok. The point is to get them thinking about the emotions and what causes them.

Alternate Ways to Play

• With a group of children, read a Scenario Card and have them agree on what the emotion should be. Then go through the line until the first person lands in that bucket. That child gets a point and you move on to the next card. For some of the cards the kids will debate what the appropriate emotion is, and you may need to step in a mediate.
• Have the child act out the emotion and the situation if they land in the right bucket.

Emotions Sorting

• One alternative option for younger kids is simply read the Scenario Card to them and have them put the card in the bucket that matches the card rather than try to throw the balls.
• This activity is also a way for older kids to get through more of the Scenario Cards than the ball throwing version described above.

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Leave the Room is a fun game to play with kids and teens to help them better understand their emotions, and it’s simple to set up and play. You can play it in a one-on-one situation, but it’s most fun in a small group.

Here’s how it works:

1. Send one person out of the room (the guesser).
2. Pick an emotion and let the remaining kids (and adults) in the room know what the emotion is. You may need to help younger kids who aren’t familiar with the emotion you’ve selected.
3. Explain that everyone should act out the emotion (either with or without making sound depending on how you’re playing).
4. Have the guesser come back in the room and try to guess the emotion.

For a fun variation, tell the people acting out the emotion that they can only use their face.

To pick feelings, you can make your own cards similar to the ones we use for Emotions Jenga, or we sometimes use a wonderful set of Emotion Cards from Jim Borgman when we play (pictured above). For an impromptu game, or if you don’t have cards made, you can use a listing of feelings (like the index in My Feelings Workbook) or simply assign feelings.

This game fits nicely into our Jump In! Stand Strong! Rise Up! plan for emotional regulation and healing and can be used as a See It, Say It, Mimic It and Talk About It activity for the Jump In stage of emotional regulation.

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Fidget Spinners are all the rage, and now Fidget Spinner Emotions will let you use a fidget spinner to help kids better understand and deal with their emotions. With kids ranging from 10 into their upper teens, I have seen first hand how they are all drawn to fidget spinners, and truth-be-told, I have a collection of them myself (though I tell people it’s only because of my work with kids).

How it works

1. Cut out the arrow pointer(s) you want to use.
2. Cut out the dotted circle and place the arrow pointer over the center of your fidget spinner. Use a piece of tape to attach it to the fidget spinner.
3. Place the fidget spinner over the gray fidget spinner outline in the middle of the emotions circle.
4. Spin the fidget spinner. When it stops, do one of the following based on the emotion the spinner lands on:
   • See It:  What emotion is represented? The pdf file (click the picture above) includes a template with and without the emotion words included. Once kids are comfortable with the emotions shows, you can switch from using the one with the emotions listed to the template without the emotion names shown.
   • Say It:   What are other words describing the same emotion?
   • Feel It:   Describe what your body feels like when you experience this emotion.
   • Mimic It:  Act out the emotion in a mirror or for others.
   • Talk About It:   Share a time you felt this emotion and what you did about it.

A copy of the instructions is included in the pdf file that can be found by clicking the picture above or here.

Why It Works

Fidget Spinner Emotions utilizes the Super Simple Feelings Management Technique which is the first part of our comprehensive emotions management plan called Jump In! Stand Strong! Rise Up! By encouraging kids and teens to See It, Say It, Feel It, Mimic It and Talk About It, you give them the tools they need to recognize, name and deal with the difficult emotions they face. On top of that, the fidget spinner itself is a good coping mechanism.

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Feelings pong is a fun game to play and easy to set up – all you need is a table some cups and ping-pong ball. It is another great activity to use with the Super Simple Feelings Management Technique to help kids and teens to better understand and deal with the emotions they face.

Here’s what you need:

1. Plastic cups (9, 13, 18 or 24 cups work best for a pyramid). We used multi-colored cups so each color represented a group of emotions but that isn’t necessary for the game.
2. Ping-Pong balls.
3. Permanent Marker.

Here’s how it works.

1. Write the names of different emotions on the bottom of each cup.
2. Set up the cups (right-side-up) on one end of a table in a pyramid shape.
3. Have the player stand at the other end of the table.
4. Try to bounce the ping-pong balls into one of the cups.
5. When the ball lands in one of the cups, turn it over see what emotion it is.
6. Have the child act out the emotion or talk about a time they experienced it.

I enjoy demonstrating Feelings Pong when I speak at conferences because you get to see which of the attendees is “a little too good” 🙂 at it!

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