“Sad, scared, surprised, angry, happy, sleepy”:Helping children name an emotion strengthens their ability to manage their own behaviour when they are experiencing strong feelings. In addition, this skill bolsters their ability to be attentive to other people’s emotions, show concern, be more helpful and develop healthy relationships.

On the website you can download the lesson plan for each of the four games separately.

The games, which use easily created “face” circles, include:

• Guessing Game: Children guess what emotion is represented by a face placed on a pillow.
• Emotion Stories: Children make up stories or use real-life situation to talk about feelings, using the faces.
• With a Book:Use the faces as characters when telling the story and ask questions about the characters’ feelings.
• With a Song:Singing a familiar song such as “5 Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day”, while using the faces to talk about the feelings of the characters in the song.

The project was created as a Heart-Mind Project.If you are inspired to do your own Heart-Mind project, the website offers guidance on how to develop one.