Interactive Printable Emotions Face – Autism & Social Skills Tool

Our special Inside Out Emotions Craft & Activity decor has proven to be very popular but I know not everyone has the time or desire for such a project (even if it does look awesome!). So I wanted to create a simplified version with a few options that you can use whether at home, in the classroom, or even in therapy. You could even adjust this for an entire classroom during a special lesson segment on emotions.

Although you can literally just draw a circle on a piece of paper and laminate it for future use I wanted a more tactile “face” for kids to hold and touch so I bought a $.97 wood circle from Walmart in the craft section. (or you can buy a set of circles online here and paint them various skin tones – you can also paint the front and the back different if you want or add hair – whatever you need)

PRINT HERE ==> Emotion Face Cutouts PDF

After painting my wood circle I added a pair of large googly eyes (although you could just draw on two black circles for eyes). Make sure to print out the PDF file above and cut out all of the emotion faces!

Then laminate them all if you want to use them more than once! I added a small strip of magnetic tape directly onto the circle face and then on the back of each laminated mouth so that the children could easily switch out the faces depending on the activity or mood they were in.

There are SO many ways you can use this project regardless of whether it’s on paper or a wooden circle! It’s a great tool with both verbal and non verbal children. You can have the child change the emotion of the figure to match his/her mood and feelings.

You can walk through a scenario while discussing emotions that you would expect to feel such as if someone threw you a surprise birthday party or made you trip in front of the class.

You can also discuss a real life story the child experienced like how they felt when taking a test or going to the doctor.

This is a simple enough project that you could literally have it completed within minutes but it’s such a valuable tool when working with children of all levels and types. I know both of my boys (one has Asperger’s the other does not) sometimes need some guidance on understanding how to feel, what they should feel, and describing what they are feeling and this is a fun visual way to point our facial cues and air out what’s going with body language.

Here are a few other tools that might be helpful:

 

 

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