Printable Emotion Faces
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Therapists looking for printable emotion faces to share with young clients can use this free downloadable PDF of emotion faces for kids.
Printable emotion faces can be a useful tool and activity to help clients gain awareness of their emotions and strengthen their stress management skills.
For young clients, you might use emotion faces for kids to help them build emotional intelligence, and for adults, you might use dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) tools to strengthen distress tolerance skills.
This article provides an overview of how to use visual aids including printable emotion faces to support kids in better understanding their emotions. We’ve also included a free emotional faces worksheet to save to your electronic health record (EHR) for future use.
How to support kids in understanding their emotions
Individuals develop emotional intelligence throughout childhood and adolescence, and sometimes adulthood, depending on any developmental challenges and the age of the child.
Typically, you can expect children to develop self-awareness of their feelings within these age groups:
- Children under three are developing language to describe their emotions and feelings
- From ages three through eight, children develop the ability to understand and manage emotions through simple coping strategies
- Pre-teens and adolescents continue to develop and strengthen their emotional intelligence and the capacity to manage their emotions
Children who understand their emotions are better equipped to solve problems, navigate challenges, and build distress tolerance skills.
Supporting clients in developing an understanding of their emotions can be especially helpful for clients who become upset about their feelings, clients who describe their emotions as “bad,” and for kids who experience poor emotional regulation or make impulsive choices based on those reactions.
Ways to use printable emotion faces
Whether you’re a therapist, parent, or teacher, using tools like printable emotion faces can support children in several ways and settings.
Here are some ideas for using printable emotion faces:
- They can be used as a visual aid to help conceptualize different emotions in therapy and a range of other environments (home, school, etc.). You could laminate a colorful worksheet and keep it on the wall in your therapy room.
- Using an emotion faces for preschool worksheet helps keep kids focused, while also providing them with the vocabulary to describe how they feel.
- With this new vocabulary, children can enhance their coping strategies and learn new ones, like taking a breath, moderating their emotions, and taking time out. This also teaches mindfulness by setting aside time to check-in with how they are feeling.
- Using printable emotion faces for kids in the classroom can help with collaborative problem solving, maintaining a positive classroom environment, and providing an opportunity for reward. Teachers can use printable emotion faces as a weekly report card that they’re in charge of, and also provide them to parents.
- Parents or caregivers can cut out printable emotion faces for toddlers and stick them on the fridge at home to help children navigate their feelings and describe what they need, like being hungry or tired.
- For neurodivergent children, printable emotion faces for autism could help children (and adults) develop communication strategies to describe how they feel. It can also guide them in understanding facial expressions to develop socialization skills.
Benefits of using an emotion faces for kids worksheet
Using tools like an emotion facial expressions worksheet can help children, parents, teachers, and anyone that has an interpersonal relationship with the child.
For instance, printable emotion faces can help:
Benefits for the child
Individually, clients feel validated, learn new language to describe how they feel, and develop emotional intelligence and interoception skills. It also creates an opportunity to ask questions and have their needs met. When used collaboratively, they also provide the opportunity for praise and encouragement, which is essential for building self-esteem.
How printable emotion faces help parents and other caregivers
When emotion faces for kids are used with caregivers, it can strengthen the parent/child relationship and help children develop collaborative problem-solving skills, such as learning to say how they feel and how to express themselves.
Benefits for teachers
Emotion faces can teach emotional regulation skills, appropriate behavior, and develop a more manageable classroom environment.
How emotion faces for kids help other children
Facial expression worksheets can enhance a group of children’s ability to interact positively with each other by strengthening their communication skills and coping strategies.
Benefits for children with developmental challenges
Children with autism or an intellectual disability can strengthen their ability to navigate social relationships and situations by developing a better understanding of what they and others are experiencing and feeling.
How to use the printable emotion faces worksheet
You can download the free printable emotion faces worksheet PDF that offers a few different ways you can work with kids to recognize their emotions.
The first page has a feelings check-in to name an emotion and connect it with the appropriate face.
The second activity is to name an emotion and connect it with a potential need. This can support emotional management and help clients learn to effectively communicate their needs.
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