In daily events, people often change their facial expressions quickly. Learning to recognize feelings in pictures helps to build a foundation for interpreting feelings in real-life situations. Teach preschoolers to recognize feelings. Play a game where they have to decide, as quickly as possible, the emotions in the picture. Start with four basic emotions: happy, sad, scared and surprised. Peruse magazines with the children and have them look at people's faces. Change the game when they can identify the feelings, and ask them to explain how they know that the person is surprised or scared. The winner is the preschooler with the best explanation.
Teaching preschoolers to link their feelings and with others' facial expressions takes time. Part of the problem is that feelings are individual. Nevertheless, imitating feeling promotes understanding about how other people are feeling. For this game, tape different cut-out pictures of faces on the floor. Let preschoolers throw a soft ball toward the faces. If the ball hits a face, they have to imitate the emotion the photo is showing.
Show preschoolers how our body language changes when we are angry or sad. When we are angry, we often cross our arms, and dropping shoulders is a sign of sadness. To prepare, for this game, draw emotions on cards. Let the preschooler pick a card with different emotions drawn on them. Ask them to show the feelings that are on the card, one at a time. Prompt the other children to guess the emotion.
Preschoolers need to learn that feelings are linked to certain situations. Draw emotions on cards and cut them out. Make two identical sets. Divide preschoolers into two teams. Read a short story or sentence and let the two teams select the emotion card that goes with the situation. Select many situations that are relevant in preschoolers' daily lives, and a few that involve changing the perspective and identifying with other people. Some examples of situations are a child who has lost a favorite toy, is bored or is going to a birthday party.