Feelings Chart For Kids

What is a Feelings Chart For Kids?

Feelings charts are a helpful tool for identifying and expressing emotions. In which case, feelings chart for kids is a list of emotions organized in a chart with corresponding facial cues that express each emotion. It is commonly used by practitioners, teachers, parents, or caregivers of children to help them identify and communicate their feelings to improve their emotional literacy. Aside from that, a feelings chart for kids can also be used to teach them new words they can assign to their emotions and recognize these feelings in others.

Currently, there are no standardized feelings charts for kids available. Therefore, practitioners have a wide variety to choose from, each with its unique content, look, and purpose.

If you’re a practitioner and think using a feelings chart will help you but don’t want to start from scratch or look for one, you’ve come to the right place. We have a customizable template just for you.

Our template comes complete with more than a handful of emotions and corresponding faces that express those emotions. Aside from that, it also has a dedicated space at the bottom where you or your young client can write down notes.

Curious about what our template looks like, or want a copy for yourself? Keep reading for more information on downloading and using our feelings chart for kids template.

How does it work?

Step One. Download the Template

Access and download a copy of our printable feelings cart for kids by doing either of the following:

• Clicking the “Use Template” or “Download Template” button above
• Searching “Feelings Chart for Kids” in Carepatron’s template library on our website or app.

Step Two. Use the Worksheet

You can give your young client a copy of the worksheet to encircle what they are feeling and write why they may be feeling the way they do. Alternatively, you can also show them the worksheet and have them point at the emotions they are feeling or felt, and you can be the one to take notes in the space provided below.

Step Three. Securely Store

After the session, you may reuse the worksheet if you or your young client didn’t write anything in the dedicated space below. However, if thoughts or observations are written in the space provided, it’s best to store the worksheet in a secure physical location or HIPAA-compliant EHR like Carepatron.

When would you use this Template?

Since feelings aren’t limited to a time and place and can happen spontaneously, practitioners and caregivers of the child may utilize the feelings chart for kids template whenever they would like. However, it’d be especially helpful if one has a copy on hand, especially when the child exhibits seemingly difficult behavior or feels frustrated about being unable to explain their feelings. 

Benefits

Versatile

Though we designed it with practitioners in mind, anyone who stumbles across our free feelings chart for kids template can use and customize it. Plus, because our template doesn’t have specific instructions, the situations when it will be used completely depend on the one who downloaded it.

Helps Kids Better Express Themselves

Because children have a limited vocabulary, they often can’t communicate what they feel to adults. With our template with faces and their corresponding emotions written at the bottom, the child can learn to identify and express, in words, what they are feeling.

Empathy Development

The template can also help the child develop empathy if the adult in charge chooses to. Using the photos on our template, the child can learn what emotions look like on someone else and, if they’ve felt that before, be able to empathize with the person currently expressing that emotion.

Improved Relationships

When a child can empathize with others, this can help improve how they handle and care for their relationships. But aside from the child, if a parent, teacher, or caregiver understands their child’s current feelings and why, they can learn to understand better, relate, and communicate with their child at that moment and in the future.. Consequently, this will improve the relationship between them and their child.

Research & Evidence

Though studies that prove the effectiveness of a feelings chart for children are few and far between, if any, some researchers believe that children widening their emotional vocabulary is essential to fostering emotional literacy.

In fact, according to the Early Children Learning and Knowledge Center, “The larger a child’s emotional vocabulary, the finer the discriminations they can make between feelings and the better they can communicate with others . . . Children who are able to label their emotions are on their way to becoming emotionally competent.” Furthermore, in the article, they go to providing strategies to help children with their emotional literacy, and one example is a deconstructed version of a feelings chart. 

And even if the evidence doesn’t back it up, with the abundance of feelings charts for children available for download online, one can deduce that people are searching for and are using this tool and, in one way or another, find this resource helpful.

References

Fostering Emotional Literacy in Young Children: Labeling Emotions | ECLKC. (2023). Retrieved 23 June 2023, from https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/mental-health/article/fostering-emotional-literacy-young-children-labeling-emotions#:~:text=The%20larger%20a%20child's%20emotional,way%20to%20becoming%20emotionally%20competent.