Helping young children understand and manage big emotions can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be!
This set of Emotions Recognition Activities turns social-emotional learning into fun, interactive games that your preschoolers will love.
Packed with bright visuals and hands-on activities, this set supports emotion recognition, vocabulary, and self-regulation skills through play.
Whether you’re a classroom teacher, homeschool parent, speech therapist, or counselor, these printable SEL activities make it easy to introduce and practice identifying feelings in meaningful ways.
From BINGO boards to write-and-draw activities, children will explore emotions like happy, sad, worried, shy, proud, angry, excited, scared, and more.
Each activity is low-prep and easy to reuse when laminated, making this a resource you’ll come back to year after year.
What’s Included in the Emotions Recognition Pack?
Emotion Posters – Large visuals for circle time, class discussions, or quiet areas.
“Today I Am Feeling” Board – Helps children check in with their emotions throughout the day.
Emotions BINGO Game – Engaging group play that reinforces emotion vocabulary.
Matching Game – Builds visual discrimination and word recognition skills.
2-Piece Emotion Puzzles – Connect the feeling word with the matching picture.
Roll & Show Mats – Roll an emotion, write the word, and draw or act it out.
Writing Center Word Cards – Great prompts for journaling or sentence building.
Write/Draw the Room Activity – Get kids moving while they practice emotions vocabulary.
Emergent Reader: “My Book of Feelings” – A trace-and-color mini book that gives students ownership of their learning.
Skills Addressed Primary Academic & SEL Skills
Emotion recognition: Identify and name common feelings with clear, kid-friendly visuals.
SEL awareness: Practice expressing and understanding big emotions in safe, structured ways.
Early literacy: Strengthen vocabulary, sight word recognition, and handwriting.
Fine motor development: Cutting, tracing, coloring, and puzzle building.
Secondary Life Skills
Self-regulation: Learn to name feelings as the first step toward managing them.
Communication: Encourage students to talk about their emotions and listen to others.
Confidence building: Celebrate when children successfully identify and share their emotions.
Problem-solving: Practice choosing strategies for handling different feelings.
How to Use the Emotions Activities
Morning Meeting or Circle Time– Use the posters and “Today I Am Feeling” board for daily check-ins.
Centers & Small Groups – Rotate games like BINGO, puzzles, and matching to keep practice fresh and fun.
Counseling or Speech Therapy Sessions – Provide targeted SEL and vocabulary support with visuals and hands-on tasks.
Independent Work – Emergent readers and writing cards are perfect for literacy centers.
Whole-Class Brain Breaks – Roll & Show mats encourage acting out emotions, helping kids reset their focus.
✔ Texas Pre-K Guidelines: Supports social and emotional development, vocabulary, and fine motor practice
✔ Virginia ELDS: Encourages self-awareness, self-regulation, and early literacy foundations.
✔ Common Core ELA Standards:
L.K.5c: Identify real-life connections between words and their use.
SL.K.1a: Participate in collaborative conversations with peers and adults.
RF.K.1: Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.
Check out what other educators are saying:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Ashley M. wrote, “Great stuff that we used for our Feelings unit.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Sarah J. wrote, “This is going to pair so well with our Feelings Unit for Preschool! Thank you!
This Emotions Recognition Pack includes 9 interactive activities that help children identify, express, and manage emotions in playful, meaningful ways.
Just print, laminate, and watch your students grow in confidence as they learn to navigate their feelings.
Please note: This is a digital download that will be available to you directly after purchase. Nothing will be mailed to you.
You will receive a link to the download in three places:
On the 'thank you' page after checkout
In your email
Login on the site here: https://lifeovercsstore.com/account
This is going to pair so well with our Feelings Unit for Preschool! Thank you!
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from 698 reviews
Just what I needed!
I love the "Flip" activities. They're always colorful and engaging. These activities reinforce childrens use of language, labeling, identifying of vocabulary associated with specific themes. My students in the past have loved the Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall flip, so when I wanted to update my beginning of the school year activities I happened to find the September themed one and knew I had to purchase it. I laminate my mats and have the kids cover the images with colored small or large game chips, vase jewels or playdough. If the images on the mats are too busyi make sure to uave extra copies for the kids to engage in matching the images. The kids love it!
I am greatly appreciative of this content. I have developmentally delayed preschool baby 3-5 year olds and this really is helping them a lot. I wish I had pictures, but I don't yet.
Great game. My students love it and my kids at home. Lots of fun times playing this game. I love the variety in boards. My suggestion for customers is to print it on cardstock so you can't see through the cards.
My kindergarten students are using these clip cards as a review activity in our morning bins. This is a fun review activity that also helps build fine motor skills.