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A feelings chart is used by the parents to determine their child’s feelings. This chart is especially helpful for those children who don’t have communication skills. With the help of chart, a child can open up about their feelings, questions or concerns.
What to include in a feelings chart?
Younger children feel several emotions and even with the chart it becomes more challenging to understand what they are actually feeling. However, the major problem is that where their emotions come from. It’s important to first to learn the basics in order to understand the variety of complex feelings. Usually, the humans are high-wired to feel the following 8 primary feelings as a response to the things;
- Anger
- Disgust
- Fear
- Happiness
- Interest
- Sadness
- Shame
- Surprise
There might be some other feelings but they can also come from a combination of these primary ones.
Reasons for using a feelings chart:
Children generally do struggle in expressing and identifying their feelings. This is a very important skill for them to learn and it is also known as emotional intelligence. Also, this ability is essential in managing interpersonal relationships. So, a feelings chart is one of the simplest ways to start teaching this to the kids. Besides being able to tell you how the kid’s feel, you should use this chart due to following reasons;
- A feelings chart introduces kids to simple feelings such as happy, anger, and more. In this way, it builds their vocabulary that enables them to comprehend more complex feelings later.
- For adults and children, feelings chart have demonstration that indicate body language and facial expressions of different feelings. Moreover, the expressions on the chart may be more emphasized rather than what you actually see in real life.
- It is difficult for children to open up and share their feelings especially negative ones. They can feel vulnerable by telling others that they are mad, sad, or they need help. However, children with special needs are often non-verbal. This means that they can’t share their feelings by using words.
Children can act in undesirable or negative ways when they can’t express their feelings with words and they don’t know any other effective ways to share.
How to make a feelings chart?
In this modern era, you can look at emojis for feeling or emotion charts. A few years ago, there was only one particular image that everyone used. But now, we have a lot of emojis and you can use them to make printable feelings charts. To look at for feelings, having something visual will help you a lot. With the help of chart, children can determine what they’re currently feeling. This also helps them to identify what other kids are also feeling. By following below steps you can make your own chart;
Select the feelings to include in your feelings chart:
Take a start by analyzing the feelings that you what to pay attention. By using primary feelings, you can keep it simple. If your child has mastered the basics then you can go for the more complicated feelings such as frustrated, embarrassed, silly, etc. Now, collect the pictures of real children representing these emotions. There are two ways for doing this;
- You can take picture of your kids.
- You can also download pictures of kids and print them out.
Place the chart together:
In the chart, stick the photos and write the relevant feeling displayed by each of the faces underneath. Then, post task in a place where it can be easily accessed by your child.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, a feeling chart is a helpful tool in order to identify a child’s feelings. This chart allows the child to open up their feelings, questions or concerns. Furthermore, it is the simple way that helps your child communicate their feelings.
