4 games that teach empathy to children
Having your kid form a basic understanding of how their peers might be feeling at a certain time and how their actions can have both negative or positive impact on somebody, can prove to be a vital life skill later on. Here are four games that can help your child learn empathy through play.
Introduction to Emotions through illustrations
The early learning centre melbourne introduces your kid to a series of emotions through an interesting game, whereby they introduce emotions and then ask their students to model these emotions.
The game is fairly simple. You list down all the emotions a person can feel; angry, happy, worried, excited, disgusted and so on. Go on to illustrate all the emotions so that your child has an easy time understanding it and then call upon students to identify various emotions.
Next step is to engage students to pick one emotion and then model it in front of their peers, where the rest of the class gets to guess the emotion. You then try to identify various actions that could have elicited the demonstrated emotion; for example, if a student demonstrated excitement, they might have won a prize at school!
Group Role-playing Scenarios
Early learning center helps students become avid listeners through a small group role playing activity.
In this game, students are divided into small groups and each group is handed out a different story. Each story represents a certain situation that made the lead character feel a certain emotion. With one lead character who would be acting out the stated emotion, the rest of the group members will act as the side characters and directors who help the lead act out the emotion.
The rest of the class is then made to call out the acted emotion, the reason behind that emotion and also the various ways they could’ve helped the lead character feel better.
Make a feelings collage
Not all students are confident enough to act out in front of their entire class. Students like them can be prompted to make a collage of feelings.
Using a range of art supplies and magazines, students are instructed to cut out various images that represent a certain emotion and then make a collage out of them. These students can then be asked to take turns and explain their collages in front of the class.The students should be encouraged to talk about the facial expressions and body language of the images they chose, that led them to think about the emotion they chose.
Play Avokiddo Emotions; a gaming app
You can play games such as the Avokiddo Emotions with your students or children. Games such as these introduce kids to emotions, through a funny and creative activity. The kids get to choose from a variety of props to dress animals, and the animals then go on to react with a certain emotion to every prop that the kids place. This open-ended activity helps engage kids, whereby they get to make choices and learn about emotions their actions elicit in the process.