Learning about emotions: activity for children 3-6 years

Learning about emotions: why it’s good for children

Your child will be happier and cope better with problems if she knows how to recognise and understand her own emotions.   This is a gradual process as children develop.

When your child can recognise, understand and talk about strong emotions like excitement, frustration, anger or disappointment, he’s less likely to express these emotions through challenging behaviour, like tantrums.

Being able to recognise and understand how other people are feeling can help your child get along with others too.

What you need to help your child learn about emotions

You can do this activity anywhere and anytime you play with your child. You just need your face!

How to help your child learn about emotions

This activity gives your child practice with naming emotions in a fun, playful way.

• Choose an emotion.  With younger preschoolers, start with basic ones – for example, "sad," and with older i, something like "frustrated" or "excited."
• Talk with your child about a time you felt that emotion and when she might feel it too – for example, ‘I get excited when it’s my birthday. When do you get excited?’
• Show your child the emotion with your face and body. For example, show your child an excited face, clap your hands, jump up and down, and so on.
• Say the emotion while you show it – for example, ‘I’m feeling excited’.
• Ask your child to show you the same emotion with his face and body.
• You can take turns showing and guessing different emotions and talking about times when you felt those emotions.

Other ideas for learning about emotions

If you have been taking about an emotion, see if you and your child can find an examplein a book you are reading.  "Look at the picture of the boy.  Does he look sad?  Why, do you think?"

Try drawing emotion faces and guessing what they represent.  Your older preschooler can draw with you.

Use favourite puppets or toys to act out emotions and then talk about the emotions the toys are ‘feeling’. For example, a toy might be feeling too scared to play or feeling excited about a party.

Adapting this emotions activity for children of different ages

Keep the emotions and emotion words very simple for your younger child. 

Your older child will be able to understand and learn words for more complex emotions, like ‘confused’ or ‘jealous’. He’ll probably find it easier to connect the names of emotions with his own experiences.