Feelings: Match the Face to the Word

Six yellow faces run down the left of this Kindergarten feelings worksheet, each in its own white card: a wide grin, a worried frown, knitted brows over bared teeth, a gasp with wide eyes, a small round mouth of surprise, and heavy half-closed lids. Down the right sit six cream word cards in large type — surprised, scared, tired, happy, sad, angry — in an order that does not match the faces. A dot marks the inner edge of every card, and the child draws a line from each face to the one word that says how that face feels. Six faces, six words, every word used once.

The child is reading a feeling off a face, not matching a noun to its object; the drawn features are the whole clue. Happy and sad come first for most five-year-olds. Angry is read from the brows, tired from the lids, and scared against surprised is the hardest pair on the page — both mouths are open, but the scared face has raised, fearful eyes and the surprised face a neat little o. The teacher asks the child to make each face before drawing the line: pulling the expression is what fixes the word.

It prints on one sheet and needs only a pencil. This is the base page of the feelings family: the which-face-shows-the-feeling page turns the same six words into rows of three faces with one right answer, the how-do-you-feel page replaces the word with a pictured situation, and the draw-the-feeling-face page asks the child to produce the face rather than find it. Start here, then move in whichever direction the class needs.