Exploring Feelings with your toddler

A while ago I wrote a post called Gentle Toddler Discipline in which I talked about expanding your toddlers emotional vocabulary through games. Here are some of the games I found and made to play with Curious George to help him name and express his emotions.

Fishing for feelings. With this game I made a big game of naming each feeling he 'caught' and then giving him an example from his life where he might feel that way eg "when mommy says no more TV you feel cross".  

We used the fishing rod from our Melissa and Doug fishing puzzle.

Here he is showing me his cross face.

Painting Feelings. For this I just told him to paint being cross or happy or sad. It was quite interesting seeing his interpretation. I painted along side him so he got the idea of what I was talking about. He also asked me to paint the faces. You can see the big hole in the paper from his cross painting.

Matching cards. I found these as a free printable and printed two sets so we could match the cards.

Feelings Poster. I bought this poster at Westpack (a huge plastics/everything else store) and it has a nice story which we've been through a few times.

Here he is telling me that one of the fishing game faces is sad like the face on the poster.

Feeling Magnets. I also made some magnets for the fridge by printing some faces I found online (see my Pinterest Feeling Games board), laminating them and  sticking those magnets from the Mr Delivery menus on the backs with double sided tape. The idea was to encourage him to bring me a face to when he couldn't tell me his feeling. However mostly he just posts them under the fridge.

Feelings iPad app. See Pinterest board.

TV characters. We also have been taking time to point out and describe how and why characters in his favourite TV shows and movies are feeling. For example in A Bugs Life - "Oh Hopper is very cross because Flick spilled all the grasshoppers food into a big puddle".

Feeling dominos. I found a set of dominos with feeling faces on them at Westpack. Again i describe the feeling we need to match up and give him an example.

Have a look at my Pinterest Feeling Games board for all these ideas and printables.