Young children are often curious about facial expressions and how people use their faces to express emotions – especially their own! We can leverage their natural curiosity by using mirror play and photos to teach children about emotions.
Using mirrors and photos is an easy way to help children learn to connect the emotions they experience on the inside with visible cues that they can see on the outside. When children learn to connect their emotions and facial expressions, they learn to recognize them in others, leading to greater emotional awareness and empathy.
What are some mirror play activities?
Mirror play activities can help children learn to recognize emotions. Having a set of handheld mirrors available is a great way to support the following strategies.
- Pair the mirrors with story time. While you’re reading the story, ask your students to show one of the emotions that a character is feeling in the story. Ask them to pay attention to how everything on their face looks. What happens to their eyebrows, eyes, and mouth when they smile? What about when they look sad or angry? Ask your students to show each other what their faces look like with each different emotion. This is a great way to learn what feelings look like on our own faces, but also on our peers’ faces!
- Put a mirror in your calming corner. When your students visit that space, encourage them to use the mirror to notice how their emotions match the face they’re making. This is not only fun and educational, but a great distraction that can help a child regulate and find their calm again.
- You can also use mirrors for a game during group times! Use emotion cards to call out an emotion and ask your students to mimic that emotion in the mirror. Ask them to notice the face they are making and look around at the faces their peers are making. Ask them to notice what is similar and what is different about their expressions.
How do photos teach emotion recognition?
Using photos can also help your students develop emotional and self-recognition skills. There are several activities you can try in your classroom to teach your students to recognize emotions.
- Take pictures of your students making faces that show a variety of emotions. Label the emotion in each photo and display them around your classroom. Not only will these make adorable decor, but they will also serve as constant reinforcement of emotion recognition!
- Use photos to help your students become emotion detectives! In this fun activity, show your students photos of people displaying various emotions. Ask them to be “detectives” to identify which emotion is being shown. Guide the children through a discussion, talking about the clues they used to make their determination. Did they pay attention to the eyebrows, eyes, and mouth?
You can take this activity a step further and show photos depicting various scenarios, such as children playing at a playground or standing around a broken toy. Ask your students to look for clues that tell them what emotion(s) the children in the pictures might be experiencing. - Another highly engaging way to use photos to teach emotion recognition is to create a classroom Emotions Book. Take pictures of your students showing various emotions, and in the captions, provide explanations for why the students might be experiencing each of those emotions. Read it aloud at group times and make it easily accessible for your students to read and look through on their own. This book is guaranteed to become a classroom favorite!
Make Learning Fun!
There are unlimited ways to teach emotion recognition to young children using mirror play and photos. Weaving lessons about emotion recognition into your daily routine will improve your students’ self-awareness, social awareness, and empathy as they continue to learn and grow!
This social emotional learning resource to help children name and recognize feelings was authored by the Watson Institute’s special education consultant, Katie Bentz, M.Ed.
If you have questions or concerns about the Watson Institute’s use of this information, please contact us.