Blog Post title image for 8 Ways to help preschoolers identify feelings

Our preschoolers have a lot of feelings and they are normally pretty BIG feelings, don’t you agree? Often, they find it difficult to identify feelings and understand how to process, manage, and work through them. So it all comes out as one big emotion!

Cover image for blog post about helping preschoolers identify feelings and manage them — Preschoolers often struggle with their emotions, so here are 8 ways to help teach preschoolers all about how to identify feelings, and manage their emotions.

When kids learn to manage their emotions in childhood it leads to positive attitudes and behaviors later in life. Children who learn healthy ways to express and cope with their feelings are more likely to:

Be more empathetic to others
Do better in school
Have better relationships
Have better mental health and well being
Have a better sense of self
Feel more confident and capable

With this in mind, I decided I needed to really dig deeper into this topic. It was clear to me, I had to first help my young learners with identifying feelings; only then could we tackle how to manage those feelings and work through them.

Image for a Teaching resourceManaging feelings and emotions — Do your children need help managing feelings and emotions? In this managing feelings and emotions resource, there are 9 difficult feelings and 12 action cards available to help stimulate discussion.

Here are 8 strategies and activities that help students identify feelings in my classroom:

1.Teach and Identify Feelings and Emotions

Start by diving into different activities to help identify emotions and feelings. Make sure your students can name different feelings and emotions. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What is it called?

Use stories or pictures of different people expressing emotions. Create a PowerPoint of different emotions to help stimulate discussion.

Image for activities to help children Identify Feelings and Emotions — Helping children with labeling and identifying feelings and emotions is such an important first step in any SEL curriculum. We know that helping children learn how to identify feelings and emotions will help them be better able to regulate their own responses to strong emotions.

I also found displaying posters that show different emotions around my classroom helped my students identify their emotions easier! Teaching emotions at the beginning of the year is always a great idea. This will give your students the skills and knowledge they need to identify and handle their emotions right from the beginning.

Image of identifying feelings and emotions posters — Display colorful posters to complement your identifying emotions unit of study.

2. Use Picture Books to Help Identify Feelings and Emotions

I love picture books in my classroom. They are a great resource for not only teaching my students reading skills but also social-emotional skills!

Search for picture books centered on characters who often have a lot of emotions. No! David! Or The Boy With Big Feelings are great choices. Look at the different characters and discuss their emotions. Ask your students questions like: How is the character feeling? How do you know? What is showing you that character is feeling that emotion?

Having students look at the words, pictures, and situations can help them identify and relate to the characters and their own emotions. Many preschoolers may even share a story of a time they felt like a character in a book.

3. Include Fun & Games to Help Your Students Identify Feelings

Games are another great way to practice identifying emotions. A fun matching game where students need to match a facial expression to the emotion. Or a game of charades where students get to act out the different emotions may be a fun way to get your students moving and identifying feelings.

I enjoy playing a game I call “Guess the Emotion” with my preschoolers. Using inference picture cards. We look at the pictures and my students have to look at the facial expressions of the person, look at the scenario and determine the emotion the person is feeling.

Image of Making inferences when identifying feelings in others resource — Get your children identifying feelings and emotions using these 14 fun monster inference pictures with questions. Each inference picture scene encourages children to identify common feelings and emotions using the clues in the pictures to draw conclusions.

4. Use Role Play to Help Identify Feelings in Others

Using puppets or having students act out different scenarios is also a great way to teach students how to identify feelings. Use scenarios that are relatable to your students. This will allow them to see themselves within these events and it will help them be able to identify feelings a little better.

Role-playing can also help with conflict resolution. With all these big emotions, there are going to be conflicts. So having the tools to help your students know what to do if a situation arises is always great to have!

Image of feeling puppets, part of a resource to help children identify feelings — Helping children with labeling and identifying feelings and emotions is such an important first step in any SEL curriculum.

5. Watch Videos/Sing Songs about Feelings and Emotions

YouTube is such a great resource for teachers nowadays and Social-Emotional Education is such a large part of education too. YouTube and teacher-authors/companies have really taken a great deal of time to come up with some great songs and videos that help kids identify feelings, manage their emotions, and work through them! A quick search of YouTube or Google will give you some awesome suggestions! Some great videos I have found are PBS Kids talk about feelings, Elmo Sings About Emotions, and Why Do We Have Emotions?

6. Identify your own Feelings and Emotions Explicitly to Your Students

Students learn through examples. As a teacher, it is a great idea to discuss your emotions and how you deal with or cope with them. Have open discussions with your preschoolers about different emotions you have throughout the day and how they affect you.

Some emotions I often talk about with my students are fear, frustration, anger, excitement, happiness, and overwhelm. These emotions come into play daily in a preschool classroom and it is important for students to know teachers can feel the same emotions and what they do to manage those feelings when they arise.

7. Use Group Time to Share Experiences Around Managing Feelings & Emotions

I really use group time or circle time to help reinforce the skill of identifying feelings. Using common scenarios and problems that may occur in our preschool classroom. I often will use scenarios that actually happened in our classroom in the past few days.

Students and I discuss our feelings, what they look like, how to manage our many complex emotions. There are a lot of different moving parts when you are teaching preschoolers about emotions. So using group time or circle time to really review and discuss the parts is helpful.

8. Teach Children Strategies

After I teach all about identifying emotions, and we discuss different scenarios, I like to finish with the teaching strategies to manage difficult feelings.

I often use examples of difficult emotions and we discuss different ways we could deal with those difficult emotions. This allows students to understand that it is normal to have an array of emotions and that there are many ways to deal with them.

If you are looking for ideas to help children cope with anxiety, check out this blog post: 5 Ways to Help Children Cope with Anxiety

💖Bringing it Together💖

Teaching children all about identifying feelings and emotions is so vital when it comes to our young learners. I love it when we discuss emotions in my preschool classroom, as it opens the door to so many amazing discussions, activities, and learning experiences. No time for prep? Check out my Identifying Feelings Bundle created with the young learner in mind 👇🏼

This identifying feelings activities bundle is full of so much variety and goodness that it will be a welcome addition to your social-emotional learning program!

Before you go, have you downloaded my FREEBIE yet? Click on the link below to grab it now! 👇🏼

Image for conflict resolution freebie — Use this conflict resolution freebie to help students remember different strategies for solving problems.

Cover image for identifying feelings bundle for preschoolers — This identifying feelings activities bundle is full of so much variety and goodness that it will be a welcome addition to your social-emotional learning program! This identifying feelings activities bundle includes identifying feelings Powerpoint & activities, identifying feelings worksheets, identifying feelings scenarios, and even classroom display posters!

Hi! Welcome to Spark Interest with Sara!

I am a preschool teacher, a curriculum designer, a course creator and a mum to a gorgeous boy who keeps me on my toes!

Creating and sharing inspiring educational resources and courses for teachers and parents is my passion! I wake up every day excited to be able to be part of nurturing young minds and hearts!

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