The movie Inside Out has been great for those of us working to help kids better understand and deal with their emotions. In addition to being a great movie, it has sparked a litany of crafts and games to go along with it. These crafts and activities can help kids to better understand the emotions they are feeling. The Inside Out Mood Board is one of those activities and is a fun way for kids who like the movie to track their emotions.

Supplies Needed for an Inside Out Mood Board

We originally found this idea on the Eighteen 25 website. We love their mood board, but we made some minor modifications to the one we built. These changes were mainly due to the materials we had on hand and because we like the idea of using a white board. Here’s what we used:

• A magnetic white board purchased from a local dollar store.
• Construction paper (you’ll need red, yellow, purple, green and blue to match the characters from the movie).
• Circular cake boards purchased from a local hobby store to serve as the backing for the character.
• Glue.
• Adhesive magnets to attach to the back of the emotions.

Making an Inside Out Mood Board

• Download and print the template from our friends at Eighteen 25 available here.
• Cut out the characters and title wording from the template.
• Glue the title to the white board.
• Cut circles out of the construction paper the same size as the cake boards and glue the construction paper to the cake boards.
• Glue the character faces to the construction paper.
• Attach the magnets or magnetic strips to the back of the cardboard cake boards.
• Hang the Mood Board somewhere where the child can reach it.
• Encourage them to use the Mood Board to show what emotion(s) they are feeling.

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The Hopes and Fears Tree is colorful craft to help kids understand that no matter what they’re worried about, they can still achieve their hopes and dreams.

Supplies Needed

• Poster board or large sheet of paper
• Markers, pens or pencils
• Construction Paper (Green, brown and a variety of other colors)
• Scissors
• Glue

Making a Hopes and Fears Tree

• Cut a rough oval to serve as the dirt for your tree.
• Make a tree with branches out of the green construction paper.
• Pick a color, or colors, of construction paper to represent works. Cut out oval “worm shaped” pieces of construction paper. Don’t worry too much about the form of these.
• Have the children write things that the worry about on the worms and glue those on the dirt around the bottom of the tree.
• Cut out leaves from a variety of colors.
• Have the child write a hope or dream that they have and glue those to the branches on the tree.
• As your pasting their hopes and dreams on the tree, remind them that our fears and worries that we overcome can serve as fertilizers out of which our hopes and dreams can grow.
• Share your own personal experiences of where this has been true.
• Encourage the child to hang their Hopes and Fears Tree in their room to remember that our anxieties and fears don’t have to stand in the way of accomplishing our hopes and dreams.

SOURCE OF IDEA: We originally found this idea in the article The New Community College Try from the New York Times and adapted it for working with kids.

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Whether you like writing or drawing or none of the above, a Feelings Journal is an extremely useful tool in learning how to cope with emotions. It is one of the most important thinking coping skills in the Please Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff Coping Tool Box and can also serve as a diversion tool or even a spiritual tool. Your journal is a space to record what’s going on in your life, and even more importantly the emotions that you are feeling. It can be as simple as a binder full of lined paper, a journal purchased from the store, or one you make on your own. The rest of this post describes how we made the journal shown in the pictures here.

Supplies

• A notebook filled with pages. We used a sketch book for our journal, but you may prefer lined paper.
• Markers
• Tissue paper
• Glue

Instructions

• Create a title page for your journal. Call it whatever you would like and decorate your title page. You can decorate the cover of your journal as well if you’d like.
• Our journal is organized by emotions, so we created a table of contents page which has the various color tissue papers that we used and the emotion each color is associated with.
• Make a page (or pages) for each emotion. Title the page with the name of the emotion, and use pieces of the appropriate colored tissue paper to decorate the page.

How to Use Your Feelings Journal

• As you notice emotions in your life, open your journal and record the date and what is going on (use words or pictures or whatever works for you). Add as much or as little detail as you need (unlike many journals, this one is built to allow for more than one entry on each page). Keep your tissue paper and markers handy so you can add additional pages as needed.
• Revisit your entries at a later date and record anything that helped you get past the less pleasant emotions or anything good that came from the more pleasant emotions.
• Once your first journal is done, make another. Or, consider separate journals for each emotion if you like to write a lot!

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Stress Balloons are a unique homemade alternative to the traditional stress ball that you can make with a child while talking to them about what is causing the stress in their lives. The instructions below use flour to fill the balloons. Use can also use rice, small beans or sand. These stress balloons can be a valuable soothing tool in a child’s Coping Tool Box.

What You Need to Make Stress Balloons

• A package of balloons.
• Flour (2/3 of a cup to a cup for each balloon)
• Funnel (or a water bottle)
• Pen or pencil
• Sharpie Marker
• Scissors

How to Make Stress Balloons

• Stretch out balloon (or inflate it to stretch it out).
• Put funnel in mouth of balloon.
• Fill balloon with flour (2-3 inches deep) using the funnel. Go slow, and push flower through funnel with a pen or pencil if needed.
• Tie balloon shut once filled with flour.
• Clip off any excess balloon material after tying.
• Draw different emotion faces on the balloons.

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The Mood Meter is a fun craft to build and gives kids a chance to gauge how they’re feeling at any given moment, and over time. Your mood meter can be as simple or as involved as you want and is a nice alternative to a traditional emotion chart. We borrowed this wonderful idea from Education.com and encourage you to check out their website for more great ideas.

What Do You Need to Make a Mood Meter

Use your creativity to make your own personal mood meter. The following represents what we did:

• White poster board.
• Ruler
• Compass (helpful for getting your circle right)
• Construction Paper (you can match the emotions you are including in your charge, but you will definitely want a darker color to use for the arrow).
• A metal brad/fastener.
• Markers or crayons

How to Make Your Mood Meter

• Decide on a “title” for your poster (we used “Today I Feel…”) and draw it on the top of the poster board.
• To use four emotions, draw a half circle using the compass. Divide that circle in half using the ruler, and then divide each half into halves.
• If you are including additional emotions, draw those in now.
• Use the drawing to cut the slices out of the construction paper and glue those slices on the poster board. Put your feelings in order of intensity or from pleasant to less pleasant emotions in order to use the meter as a gauge.
• Have the child write the names of each emotion inside the slice and draw a face representing the emotion. You may need to help with this step for younger kids.
• Cut an arrow from the black construction paper and attach it in the middle of the meter using the metal fastener.
• Have the child decorate their mood meter.
• Encourage the child to record where the currently fall on the mood meter and continue use it to understand their emotions better.

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The Color Wheel of Emotions provides kids and teens an artistic outlet for exploring their emotions. It also provides a golden opportunity to talk about those emotions with them. Although a simple exercise, the Color Wheel of Emotion hits on most of the aspects of the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique – particularly the “Talk About It!” component. And, the best part is, you don’t even have to be a good artist to do it. The color wheel above was done by my (at the time) 13 year old daughter Lyndsey.

Supplies

• White piece of paper or poster board.
• Colored pencils, crayons or markers.

How to Make a Color Wheel of Emotions

1. Have the child draw a circle on a piece of paper or poster board.
2. Have them divide the circle into eight (roughly) equal slices by drawing a + and an x on the circle.
3. Ask the child what eight emotions they would like to put on their Color Wheel. Feel free to assist the child in coming up with the emotions. However, you should avoid choosing emotions for them.
4. Write the name, or have the child write the name, of each of the emotions outside the circle on each slice.
5. Have the child fill the slice with a color, or color a picture or representation of each emotion in the corresponding slice.
6. Talk to the child about why they chose the emotions they did for the chart.
7. Discuss what they drew and how they chose to represent each emotion in the circle.

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Pool Noodle Fidget Toys are an easy DIY project you can make for, or with, your kids. They are cheaper than fidget spinners, squishies and other fidget toys, and you can mass produce them with relative ease. I’ve worked with kids for years, and for many of those years I was in charge of games with a large group of students. Ever since that time, I’ve kept a box of pool noodles in my basement, because you never know when you’re going to need them! (FYI, you can get a box fairly cheap after summer is over). A standard pool noodle can be used to create 42 fidget toys. Here’s all you need to know:

63 inches – 42 stress relievers

Items Need For Project

• Pool Noodles
• Scissors or a Knife
• Ruler
• Pencil

Instructions

• Mark off sections of approximately 1 1/2 inches (about 3.8 cm) each using a ruler and a pencil.
• Cut the pool noodles using the scissors or a knife (we’ve found that a serrated bread knife works really well.

How to Use Pool Noodle Fidget Toys

• First, don’t worry about imperfections. You can see above that they don’t all turn out perfect. They still work.
• Squeeze pool noodle whenever you feel stressed, afraid, worried or other intense emotions or just want to fidget.
• Think about the motion of your hand squeezing the pool noodle and releasing. Watch as the pool noodle scrunches up then goes back to its original form.
• Repeat as needed. 🙂

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Emotion Face Plates are a fun way to get kids thinking about what emotions look like. Emotion Face Plates are an easy project that you can do with objects lying around your house, and once you get kids started, it is something they can continue to work on by themselves.

Supply Listing for Emotion Face Plates

This is a fairly simple task. All you need is:

• Paper plates (that you can write on).
• Markers, pens or crayons.
• Scissors (if you want to make the half-plate emotion faces).

How to Use Emotion Face Plates

• Pick emotions (the picture above only includes examples of less pleasant emotions, but make sure you include some more pleasant emotions in your list as well).
• Draw a face representing the emotion on the back of paper plate. It sometimes help to label the plates with the name of the emotion if the child will be referring back to them later. You can write the name on the other side of the plate if others will be guessing what emotion is represented.
• If you’re doing half-plate emotions, drawn the eyes on the upper half of the plate and the mouth on the lower half. Then cut the plate in half. As above, it might help to label both half of the plates with the name of the emotion.

Ideas for Using Emotion Face Plates

Here a few starter ideas for using the emotion face plates. Have fun with the child while engaging them in conversations about their emotions and emotions in general.

• Create a collection of emotion face plates that the child can refer back to when they are having trouble putting a name to their emotions.
• Attach yard to each plate and put a tack in the wall. Encourage the child to hang the plate(s) with the emotion(s) they are currently feeling.
• Act out various scenarios from the Hope 4 Hurting Kids Scenario Cards using the plates as each emotion is represented.

Additional Ideas for Using the Half-Plate Emotion Faces

The half-plate emotion faces offer some additional fun possibilities.

• Act out various scenarios from the Hope 4 Hurting Kids Scenario Cards using half the plate as each emotion is represented. Have the child act out the other half of the emotion (eyes or mouth) during the activity.
• Another fun game you can play is called “Opposite Half.” Have the child hold half of the plate (top or bottom) in front of their face. They then must use the other half of their face to represent the opposite emotion. For instance, if they hold the bottom half of happy in front of the bottom half of their plate, they must act out sad with their eyes.

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With Easter coming up soon, it’s a great time to stock up on empty Easter Eggs. These Emotion Egg Faces are a simple, fun and captivating way to help kids learn about, and express, emotions. They can be utilized for several of the steps in the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique.

How to Make Emotion Egg Faces

• All you need for this craft is empty Easter Eggs, a marker and some clay or play-doh (optional).
• Draw a different emotion face on each Easter Egg. The eyes and the nose should go on the top half of the egg with the mouth on the bottom.
• Put a piece of clay in the bottom of each egg. This helps them to stand up better (you can see we used stands made out of pool noodle for the picture above)

How to Use Emotion Egg Faces

• Discuss the various emotions as the child is drawing them on the eggs. Explore with them what different emotions look like (in terms of your eyes, nose and mouth). Encourage them to show you what the emotion looks like on their face (perhaps showing them in a mirror) so they can draw it on the egg.
• Create Emotion Egg Faces separately from the child for the same emotions. Compare your Emotion Egg Faces with the child’s and explore how they look similar and how they look different.
• Encourage the child to tell a story using the Emotion Egg Faces. Help their story along where needed, but encourage them to tell most of the story.
• Finally, and this may be the most fun, mix up the top halves of the eggs with the bottom halves. Talk about what each new egg looks like and how they would describe it.

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The emotions paper chain is a fun craft you can do with kids and can be a crucial part of the Talk About It! component of The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique.

What You Need to Make An Emotion Paper Chain

1. Various colors of construction paper.
2. Scissors
3. A marker, pen, pencil or crayons.
4. Tape or glue

How To Make an Emotion Paper Chain

• Cut the construction paper into strips of equal width.
• On each strip, have the child write a statement in the following form:

I feel ______ when __________.

• Be prepared to offer suggestion either for the emotion (a deck of emotion cards or an emotion chart can help if you’re drawing a blank) or the scenario (use our Emotion Scenario Cards if you need help).  It’s important to let the child come up with the other part of the equation though as they learn to associate emotions with specific events in their own lives.
• Make as many strips as you want, and talk to the child about any scenarios they come up with where it makes sense to dig deeper.
• Once the child is done making strips, help the child to create the rings of their emotion paper chain (writing side out) and interlocking the rings by gluing or taping the ends together (we’ve had more luck with tape than glue).
• Help the child to hang their emotion chain somewhere as a visual reminder of what they have learned about emotions in their own life.

Variations on the Emotion Paper Chain

Like many of the activities here on Hope 4 Hurting Kids, you can modify the emotion paper chain in a number of ways to fit the personality of circumstances of the child you are working with. Here are some ideas:

• Color code the emotions so that you use red construction paper for anger emotions, blue for sad emotions, purple for fear, yellow for happy, etc.
• Focus on less pleasant emotions (anger, fear, disgust, etc.) and use something more temporary to bind the rings together (glue dots or putty work ok). As the child “conquers” the negative emotion or the situation that gave rise to it, help them to remove that ring from their paper chain.
• Encourage the child to pick a length of time equal to the length of chain they want. Cut enough strips for that period of time and encourage the child to focus on more helpful emotions (joy, gratitude, peace, etc). Have them pick one helpful scenario and emotion each day and add that to the chain. At the end of the period of time, discuss their paper chain and what they learned from the exercise.

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