Today, I’m going to share a fun—and easy to prep!—activity for teaching feelings and emotions to your child using nothing but some googly eyes glued to a piece of paper and markers or crayons!

This activity is part of the Feelings & Emotions unit in my Kindergarten at Home curriculum. Emotional wellness is sprinkled throughout the 36-week curriculum, but this unit in particular is filled with fun activities to dive deep into feelings, emotions, and the tools to manage them.

Before we get into the activity, I also wanted to share this FREE Printable Daily Rhythm Wheel. When we know what to expect in a day, our day flows so much smoother. The same goes for our little ones. When we have a consistent, predictable rhythm, we set the stage for our little ones to thrive. You can grab your copy—which also includes a FREE Sample of Kindergarten at Home—right here:

Teaching Feelings and Emotions with… Googly Eyes?!

Materials

For this activity, you will need:

• Paper
• Markers or crayons
• Googly eyes
• Glue
• Mirror (optional)

That’s it! Easy peasy!

Instructions

To prep for this activity, glue some googly eyes on a piece of paper. You could draw circles around the eyes for the face as well, or leave that task up to your little one.

In Kindergarten at Home, this activity is one of the five Quiet Time activities included with the Feelings & Emotions unit.

If the idea of Quiet Time is new to you (where have you been!? I have so much to tell you!!!), let me quickly explain: your child plays quietly and independently while you sit back and rest with a warm tea, get some work done, or… whatever you would like to do! Independent play doesn’t always come naturally to our little ones; sometimes, we need an activity to get them started—hello, googly eye faces!—and the play naturally flows from there.

Now, back to the activity!

Give your little one the paper with the googly eyes, along with some markers or crayons, and have them create faces. They can try to make each face represent a different feeling or emotion. Perhaps one face is surprised, another angry, one happy, etc.

Having a mirror accessible during this time is very helpful! Your child can look in the mirror to see how their facial expression changes with different feelings and emotions.

• How does the shape of their mouth change when they make a surprised face? What about an angry face or a happy face?
• How do their eyebrows change?
• How do their ears change?

Okay, so maybe the ears don’t change, but that’s all part of what your little one will be looking at and discovering!

When your child is done drawing their faces, you can sit down together and talk about each face’s emotion. Why might they be feeling that way? Being able to recognize and name emotions is a very important step in a child’s emotional wellness development!

This is also a wonderful opportunity for language development, imaginative thinking, and empathy as your little one brings the characters and their backstory to life.

See this little guy below? We did this activity close to Halloween, so my youngest decided that Jeff (did I mention we also gave them names?) was feeling scared—or perhaps nervous—to go out trick or treating. He was worried the costumes and decorations would be too scary.

Wow, those are some big concepts in there! Scared, nervous, worried… lots of opportunities to explore those feelings and how they are related.

This is such a simple activity for teaching feelings and emotions, but it is filled with truly valuable learning for our little ones.

You will find this activity and so much more in Kindergarten at Home. The curriculum provides a brilliant foundation for 4-6 year olds in academics, critical thinking, problem-solving, and emotional wellness in as little as 3 hours a week.

Take a peek at Kindergarten at Home right here:

https://shop.howweelearn.com/pages/kindergarten-at-home

Thank you so much for reading, sweet friend!

xo
Sarah