Description
Students practice expressing different emotions in this fun guessing game.
Supplies
- Printed and cut out emotion cards (See Additional Notes)
How to Play
- Prep work: Cut out each of the emotion cards on cardstock or paper that cannot be seen through.
- Put one emotion card face down in front of each student.
- Choose one student to start.
- That student picks up their emotion card without looking at it and places it on their forehead with the words and picture facing out.
- The other students in the group look at the card and act out what is on the card.
- While acting, students are not allowed to say any words and can only use their facial expressions and body language to act.
- The student with the card begins guessing what emotion is on their card.
- Once the student guesses correctly, the next student in the circle begins.
- This continues until time is up or until all students have had a chance to guess a card.
Activity Prompts for Reflection
- How easy was it for you to act out the different emotions?
- Other than your facial expressions, how else can you let others know how you are feeling?
- Did anyone hear an emotion that they felt today? When did you feel that way?
- What emotions did you feel during this game?
Other Ways to Play
- To make this easier, show students the emotion cards before passing them out, so that they know what emotions they might be guessing from.
- To make this easier, allow students to use words while acting it out. Making sure to remind them not to say the emotion word written on the card.
- To make this more challenging, print two copies of the emotion cards and split the group into two teams. Have the two teams compete to see which team guesses all the cards correctly first.
- If there’s time, collect the cards after all students have gone once. Shuffle the cards and pass them out again, allowing students to guess different emotions each round.
Additional Notes
- Download the Emotions Cards PDF then print and cut out the cards
- Use the SEL Activity Prompts to tie other SEL competencies to this activity.
