Emotional Whirlwind Craft Activity

Do you have emotional toddlers? Join the club!

Craft and Activity Step-By-Step

The Light Bulb Moment

The other day I picked up my daughter from school, my son in tow, like any normal day. We strapped into the car seats, turned on the kid friendly music mix and set off for the 2 mile drive back to our suburban little home.

Somewhere between this sweet moment and our garage, all hell broke loose. 

My 2 year old started crying because he wanted a drink of water from an old water bottle that had fallen on the floor and sloshed around the backseat for probably a week. My 5 year angrily shouted at him to stop which only fueled the toddler fire. Eventually the 5 year old began crying because the 2 year old was crying.

It was an emotional whirlwind, ya'll.

I was feeling overly mom-like that day so when we got home I sat the children down at what is now used as the craft table to talk about our emotions. 

Cue my light bulb moment. This discussion needed to be a craft.

Required Materials/Preparation

Overall this is a low preparation craft with minimal materials which can be substituted with whatever materials are available to you. Suggested materials include:

• Construction Paper or Paper plates
• Markers or Crayons
• Craft Stick or Popsicle Sticks
• Tape or Glue

The Craft 

I had the kids cut out circles of several colors and we all took turns discussing emotions and drawing those emotions on the circles.

I'm particularly impressed by my 2 year old son's representation of anger.

With a quick application of craft sticks and tape, we had an eclectic collection of emotional face masks.

The Activity

Once our emotion mask collection was complete, we discussed each of the emotions and how we felt while experiencing these emotions.

• Happy
• Sad
• Angry
• Excited
• Scared
• Disgusted

I asked the kids several questions related to recent real life experiences and had them choose the emotion they felt during this experience.

• When your sibling cries, how does it make you feel?
• When I give you a surprise, how does that make you feel?
• When I compliment you, how does that make you feel?
• When your sibling takes your toy, how does it make you feel?
• And so on...

Back and forth, we asked each other emotional questions for nearly 30 minutes. My daughter overwhelmingly chose "excited" as her emotion. Meanwhile, my son overwhelmingly chose "Angry" as his.

That's the difference between two tiny little people and their very large personalities. 

The Outcome

After our activity was done we  set the masks on their craft table. The kids spent the rest of the running back to the table and holding up masks when they felt a particular emotion. It was evident that they were proud of what they had created, and proud of their refined ability to identify and come to terms with the emotions they were experiencing.

Disgusted and Sad

Excited

Happy

Angry

Scared, Disgusted, Excited, Happy, Angry and Sad

Perhaps next round we need to create a "Proud" mask!

See you at Disney!