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Identifying & Expressing Feelings

 

Activity: Developing Emotion Vocabulary 

 

Grade Level(s): Kindergarten

 

ASCA Student Standard(s):

  • PS:A1.5 Identify and express feelings

 

Learning Objective(s):

  • Increase "feeling words" vocabulary

  • Ability to identify their own feelings

 

Materials:

  • List of feeling words

  • Feeling dice

    • Small boxes

    • Feeling pictures (facial expression and feeling word) on each side

  • Check-in board

    • Poster divided into sections

    • Each section has a facial expression and feeling word

    • Clothes pins, each with a student's name

 

 

Procedure:

  1. Open topic about emotions and feeling words. Have students identify and loosely define ones they know, list on the board.

  2. Dice activity

    1. Break up the children into small groups and have them take turns rolling the dice

    2. Have them read the feeling word for the face/ or identify the feeling

    3. Have the children imitate the facial expression related to the feeling

    4. Once they identify the feeling, have them talk about a time they felt that feeling

  3. Story

    1. Bring the students back together in a large group to read a story

    2. Read aloud a story book (preferably a book with pictures)

    3. Check in with the students throughout the story asking them feeling questions about the character (examples: "how do you think the character is feeling?", "what made the character feel this way?" and have them explain)

  4. Check-in board

    1. Pass out clothes pins to students

    2. Have them place their clothes pin on the emotion they're feeling

    3. Ask them why they put their pin on that feeling

    4. Explain how they will be using the check-in board daily and their teacher will check in with why they feel that way and if that feeling changes during their time at school and why

 

Evaluation:

  • Take record of students who attended the classroom guidance

  • Record differences in student feeling word vocabulary sizes

    • based on the list of words they provided before the activity and word usage after the activity

  • Evaluate how frequently students use feeling words accurately for themeslves and others

 

Follow Up:

  • Work with teacher to see how the check-in board is working, notice a difference in student use of feeling words (frequency, particular words, accuracy),have teacher identify if any students are still struggling with expanding their feeling words vocabulary.

 

 

 

 

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