The Emotions Chart is designed to help young people to recognize and name their emotions which is an important step in the healing process. These charts can play a key role in helping kids with the See It! Say It! and Feel It! components of the The Super Simple Feelings Management Technique. You can download the chart by clicking here or on the image above.

What Are These Emotion Charts?

These charts are based on the characters and emotions included in our Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards and the forthcoming book 150 Emotions Every Child Should Know, By Age. Each page includes 30 different emotions, and are designed to introduce new emotions as the child grows older.

• Chart #1 (pictured above) includes 30 basic emotions every child should know by age 8.
• Chart #2 adds an additional 30 emotions children should know by age 10.
• Chart #3 adds an additional 30 emotions children should know by age 12.
• Chart #4 adds an additional 30 emotions teens should know by age 14.
• Chart #5 adds an additional 30 emotions teens should know by age 18.

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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

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Shark Bite was one of the hottest games around this past Christmas. It was flying off the shelves and hard to get your hands on. It also seemed like the perfect game to help kids learn more about emotions. Before you can play though, you’ll have to drop a few buck on your own copy of the game. You can get it through Amazon here.

Playing Shark Bite

Shark Bite is a simple game to set up and to play. You put the fish in the mouth of the shark, then roll the dice and fish out the number of fish shown on the dice. The person who pulls the fish that causes the shark to bite loses, but really everyone wins in the fun game.

Modifying the Game to Play Shark Bite Feelings

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A significant part of helping kids to deal with their emotions (Jump In! Stand Strong! Rise Up!) is helping them to develop a robust feelings vocabulary. That is why we are excited to present our very own set of Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards.

What Are Emotion Cards?

Each of these 54 cards includes the name of an emotion, a face demonstrating that emotion, and a brief definition of the feeling. Definition have been taken from, or adapted from entries in the WordNet® lexical database of English. The emotions included in this deck of feelings cards were extracted from our upcoming book 150 Emotions Every Kids Should Know – By Age (coming, hopefully, in late 2018).

How Do I Get These Cards?

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Feelings Pictionary is a new take on an old game that help kids to learn about emotions while having fun at the same time. It’s a great game for small groups, schools or family game night. This game builds on the history of games like Pictionary; Win, Lose or Draw and Draw Something to create an environment where kids and adults can explore what emotions look like in all kinds of fun ways. All you need to play is two sets of cards that you can download here at Hope 4 Hurting Kids and something to draw on.

The Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards

The first set of cards you will need is our free Hope 4 Hurting Kids Emotion Cards. Each of these 54 cards includes the name of a emotion, a face demonstrating that emotion, and a brief definition of the feeling. Unlike regular Pictionary where the drawer only needs to get their team to guess the object they are drawing, in Feelings Pictionary the teammates will have to guess both the object and the emotion shown on the Emotion Card.

The Feelings Pictionary Cards

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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.

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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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Fishing for Feelings is a fun game to play with kids to help them learn about emotions. With our template and a few magnets, you can create a game that will help preschool through elementary aged kids to Jump In! Stand Strong! Rise Up! Fishing for feelings is a great game to help kids start to master the skills included in the Super Simple Feelings Management Technique

Here’s how Fishing for Feelings works.

First download our easy to use template by clicking here or on the picture of the template to the right. Follow the instructions in the template for creating the emotion circles and playing the game.

We bought pre-made reinforced circles at Hobby Lobby and colorful magnets for minimal cost to make the game more aesthetically pleasing, but you can certainly cut your own reinforcing circles and use other magnets if you prefer. (NOTE: the link included for magnets are white as we found the color ones in our local store, but they are not available online)

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Helping Your Child Deal With Divorce is a tri-fold pamphlet we’ve designed for parents. If you are a divorced or divorcing parent who is looking for information on how to help your child, this pamphlet is for you. It is also designed for those who work with kids who might be asked by a parent how to help their child.

As explained in the pamphlet,

Divorce hurts. When there are children involved, it hurts even worse for you and for them. This pamphlet is designed to help you to help your child better understand what is going on, grieve the loss they have experienced, heal from the hurt caused by divorce and lay a groundwork to allow them to move forward with their lives and find hope and healing.

The pamphlet covers basic information like how to tell you child, helping your child to grieve, dealing with emotions and helping your child after the divorce. It also includes links, books and other resources that might be helpful. You can access a pdf version of the pamphlet by clicking the photo above or here.

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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

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