I know I’ve said it before, but Inside Out is such a great tool for teaching and practicing feelings identification with kiddos.  It’s a great way to get some serious learning done, but the movie characters are fun and make it more bearable for children.  Feelings identification can seem really simple to adults, but lots of children need help in order to be successful identifying how they feel.  Ultimately, the goal is to get them to then be able to regulate those emotions, but we have to start with being able to identify them first.

Below you can find two different worksheets which allow children to match situations to the appropriate feeling(s) that someone would feel in that situation.    Each worksheet has 12 different scenarios.  Some may trigger a few different feelings in children.  For example, there are a few situations which may make a child feel both sad and mad.  Additionally, one child might identify a feeling different from another.  For example, one child might be happy that it’s raining (maybe a kiddo who likes to jump in mud puddles) while another might feel sad that it’s raining.

I encourage any caregivers using these worksheets to be open-minded when going over this with a child.  If a child identifies a feeling that doesn’t seem to make sense to you at first, let them talk about it instead of immediately telling them they’re wrong.  Sometimes I’ve been surprised by a child’s perspective of a situation.  The different situations provide plenty of prompts to talk about feelings.  If a child doesn’t seem to be grasping a situation, it can also be helpful to role-play it and have them try to identify a feeling during the role-play.

Inside Out Matching Worksheet 1 (click link to print):

Inside Out Matching Worksheet 2 (click link to print):