Games to learn emotions 認識情感

As we mentioned in a previous post, teaching our children to express their emotions in Chinese can help develop their fluency and emotional intelligence. In this post, we are going to share some activities that will teach your children some basic and slightly more complex emotions.

ACTIVITIES OF THE WEEK

Most of these activities are for younger children. If your child is older but doesn’t know the Chinese terms for emotions, they should pick them up fairly quickly.

Emoji Memory Activity (age 3+, single or multiple players)

   

 WHAT YOU NEED 道具 
  • Sheets of paper
  • Pen/Pencil
 HOW TO PREPARE 事前準備 
  • You can draw different images to represent feelings, or just regular faces on cards.
  • If stuck, there are a wide range of readily available emojis as your source of inspiration.
  • Write the emojis' corresponding emotions on separate cards.
  • Feel free to download the activity sheets to help you get started (both traditional and simplified Chinese versions provided).

 

 HOW TO PLAY 玩法 
  1. Mix both the emojis and the vocab cards together and have them face down.
  2. Have your child flip over two cards. If they match, they can go again. If they do not, it’s the next person’s turn.
 ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO PLAY 玩法變化 

Depending on your child’s age, you can increase or decrease the difficulty level of the activity by taking the following steps:

  1. To make it easier, you can write the vocabulary at the bottom of the emoji cards so your child can also match the characters.
  2. To make it easier, you can use fewer cards.
  3. To make it more difficult, you can use a LOT of cards.
  4. To make it more difficult, you can use more complex emotions like disgust (討厭), loneliness (寂寞), jealousy (妒忌), envy (羨慕), etc.

Emoji Matching Activity (age 3+, single or multiple players)

 WHAT YOU NEED 道具 
  • Sheets of paper
  • Pen/Pencil
 HOW TO PREPARE 事前準備 
  • You can draw different images to represent feelings or just regular faces on cards.
  • If stuck, there is a wide range of readily available emojis as your source of inspiration.
  • Write the emojis' corresponding emotions on separate cards. You will need a set of the vocabulary cards for each child playing.
  • Feel free to download the activity sheets to help you get started.
 HOW TO PLAY 玩法 
  1. Mix up the Emoji cards and give a set of the vocab cards to each child playing.
  2. Flip over an emoji card. See who can find the matching vocabulary card first. Whoever is fastest gets the emoji card. Whoever collects the most emoji cards wins.
 ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO PLAY 玩法變化 

Depending on your child’s age, you can increase or decrease the difficulty level of the activity by taking the following steps:

  1. To make the activity easier, you can simply teach your child what the emojis are called and have them say the emotion depicted on the card.
  2. To make the activity easier, the children don’t have to compete against each other.
  3. To make the activity harder, you can include more cards.
  4. If your children vary in ages, you can give handicaps to the older children. For example, every TWO cards counts as one point.

Emoji Guessing Activity (age 3+, multiple players)

 WHAT YOU NEED 道具 
  • Sheets of paper
  • Pen/Pencil
 HOW TO PREPARE 事前準備 
  • Write the different emotions on cards
 HOW TO PLAY 玩法 
  1. Have one child choose from the deck of emotions, without letting the others see the card. If your child cannot read, you can include a picture representing the emotion instead.
  2. Have the child act out the chosen emotion in front of the other kids.
  3. The other kids have to guess what the emotion is.
 ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO PLAY 玩法變化 

Depending on your child’s age, you can increase or decrease the difficulty level of the activity by taking the following steps:

  1. To make the activity easier, you can have pictures of the emotions on the cards along with the actual vocabulary terms.
  2. To make the activity harder, you can add more complex emotions such as disgust, loneliness, etc.

We would love to hear your comments and see pictures of your kids doing the activities. Make sure you join our Sagebooks HK Parent Support Facebook Group and share with us!

TIP OF THE WEEK

Find out what motivates your child and use it as a reward.

Sometimes, we’re told that we shouldn’t reward our children for doing something they should be doing anyway.

However, isn’t life full of doing things that we consider a duty? Things don’t always have to be so serious. There’s nothing wrong with giving our kids little “wins” when they do something they don’t particularly want to do.

How can you apply this to reading Sagebooks or doing Chinese homework?

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