Worksheets, Tools, and Resources to Help Your Children Understand Their Colourful Feelings

Worksheets, Tools, and Resources to Help Your Children Understand Their Colourful Feelings

by Monique Staples & Michaela Myles

Actively engaging your children in activities focused on learning to label their emotions will provide them with the language they need to express their emotional state with you and to learn coping skills to self-regulate. The first step is to learn to identify the emotion. Get creative! Arts and crafts can be a fun way to explore the various rainbow of human emotion!

Visual Cards for Managing Feelings

Use these free printable "How do I feel today?" sheets to facilitate exercises with children to artistically express their thoughts and feelings on that particular day. They can draw a face, a color, a picture, or anything else that represents how they feel. You can also cue them to draw specific emotions and put each face on a popsicle stick so that they can use them as masks to help identify their emotions in the heat of an intense moment. This is only one of the activities highlighted within a list of 13 games & emotions activities for toddlers and kids:

https://butfirstjoy.com/emotions-activities-for-toddlers/ (Santos, 2019)

Printable Emotions Coloring Sheet

Here is another printable emotions coloring page you can use to begin conversations around each emotion. Make sure to ask open ended questions such as "can you remember a time you felt happy?", "what does it look like when you feel angry?" and begin to engage in some educative conversation around emotions they may not recognize.

Inside Out Movie Questionnaire

Inside Out is an incredible movie that follows the emotions of a young girl who is dealing with some very strong feelings when she moves away from her hometown. The movie highlights the importance of every emotion and how powerful it is to acknowledge and validate our emotions when we are experiencing them. Watching this movie with your child will automatically open conversations around infant mental health, we have additionally linked a questionnaire to help guide your conversations as well.

https://www.buffaloschools.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=8596&dataid=45486&FileName=inside_out_movie_questions.pdf (Buffalo School, n.d.)

KidCentral Age-Specific Resources

Since we know you may have children who vary in age, we felt that connecting you with KidCentral TN would help greatly to be able to access where your child is at in their milestones and what specific mental health-boosting activities would benefit them at that time. This site provides you with countless suggestions of behaviors to nurture in your children (KidCentral TN, 2021).

https://www.kidcentraltn.com/health.html#mental-emotional-health

Remember to focus on your child's personal interests and strengths to engage them in discussions around infant mental health! Search for activities using their favorite toys and adapt your activities to your child's individual mental health struggles. The more you create an environment that discusses the importance of mental health, the more resilient and open your infant will grow to become.