The Preschooler

Masking How You Feel

Young children often have a difficult identifying specific emotions in themselves and in others.  However, this is a skill that can practiced in many ways.  One is to simply ask your child how he is feeling when you can see that he is visibly angry, sad, excited, bored or any other feeling.  Another activity you can try is to create masks which your child (and you) can put on to help illustrate an emotion.  Use old magazines to find pictures that show a large number of different feelings.  Cut out the faces and glue each one to a separate paper place.  Attach a craft stick to use as a handle.    You now have a set of masks which can be used to practice the skill of identifying feelings in a variety of ways.  Here are a few to try:

• Use the masks like flash cards and simply go through them one at a time naming the emotion that is shown on each face.
• The masks can be used to act out feelings.   Hold a mask up to your face and use the rest of your body to show how a person with that emotion would act.
• They can be utilized throughout the day to illustrate an emotion that is being felt at that time.  When you see that your child is angry, for example, tell her to find the mask that shows how she is feeling.  Help her to put her feelings into words by saying, “I’m feeling because ….”  This same sentence can be used with any other emotion by filling in the blank and then the reason for feeling that way.

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Written by Laura on June 19, 2009