Children love role-play and dress-up games. Encourage preschoolers to dress up as different characters, and then take it one step further. Conduct an improv show, where one or two children are assigned different emotions -- sadness, happiness, fear, anger and surprise -- and then have the group try to identify what emotion they are trying to convey. Let each child have a turn in this week-long activity.
Assign a self-portrait collage in which your students have to work with parents to select photographs of them in various states of emotion. Encourage parents to go through photo albums, scanning pictures of the children in various stages of emotions. Remind parents not to coach the children, but allow their children to decipher what emotion they might have been feeling at the time the picture was taken. Scan the photos onto printer paper so that the child can cut out their image and paste them onto a large sheet of construction paper. The children can present to the class what emotions they were experiencing in each photo.
During circle time, provide picture cards of children in various states of emotion, and encourage children to identify which emotion that child might be feeling, and encourage them to identify scenarios on the reasons for those emotions. Iyou show a child mad or crying, ask the students what might have caused this emotion to the child within the picture.
Preschool teachers should have a large collection on hand of popular books that vividly express various emotions of the characters. "No David," "When Sophie Gets, Angry, Really Angry," "How are you Peeling?" and "Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day," are all entertaining and vividly illustrated books that encourage children to learn and speak freely about their emotions. After book reading, open up a discussion about feelings, and how children deal with their feelings of anger and fear. Keep it positive too; let kids talk about what makes them really happy.