Identifying Emotions Worksheets: Printables to Help Express Emotions

The ability to identify emotions is crucial to how your child experiences the world around them. When they can name their emotions, they build emotional intelligence, resilience, and positive behaviors.

Our collection of identifying emotions worksheets provides activities that can help kids notice how they feel their emotions in their minds and bodies. These worksheets help them recognize their emotions in the moment, which can lead to better outcomes.

Exploring My Emotions Worksheet

Our Exploring My Emotions worksheet helps children understand the emotions they experience, one at a time. Its core structure mirrors the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) triangle by asking children to explore what happens when they encounter a specific emotion. It breaks this experience down into:

• Thoughts: what goes through the child’s mind
• Feelings: how the emotion physically manifests in the child’s body
• Actions: how the child behaves as a result of the emotion

Younger children might not understand the idea of “big emotions,” and this worksheet finds a way to simplify this overwhelming mix of conflicting feelings and physical symptoms. It helps them build bodily awareness by asking kids to reflect on their physical sensations, such as tightening in the chest or sweaty palms.

How to use it:

1. Have your child choose a specific emotion to explore. If they’re not sure what emotion they’re experiencing, use our Feelings Wheel to help.
2. Ask your child to jot down what thoughts they have when they encounter this behavior. If they’re sad, for instance, they might think “Things won’t get better.”
3. Move on to physical sensations. Ask your child to observe how their bodies change. If they’re frustrated, maybe their body feels warm, or they start to shake with anger.
4. Explore the behavioral outcomes. When your child is angry, do they scream? Want to throw something?
5. Brainstorm ways to cope together, but ensure that your child can use these calming tactics independently.

Weekly Emotions Tracker & Reflection Worksheet

Tracking emotions helps a child identify patterns and triggers that make them behave a certain way. With our Weekly Emotions Tracker and Reflection worksheet, they might realize that taking tests gives them unimaginable anxiety, or that they feel happiest when they’re playing with friends at the local park.

Our worksheet also normalizes emotional fluctuations. It reminds children that emotions are temporary, even when they feel like they aren’t.

How to use it:

1. Set a daily schedule to reflect. For a child, this might be when they get home from school or right before bed.
2. Have your child choose their dominant emotion in the moment. If they experienced multiple emotions throughout the day, have them check the two most persistent emotions.
3. At the end of the week, go through the reflection prompts. Use these prompts to identify any repeating emotions, triggers, or behaviors. Discuss proactive adjustments your child can make to their routine. For example, if they’re constantly irritated because of poor sleep, they can work on developing a healthy bedroom routine.

Identifying Feelings Worksheet

A child can only process their emotions if they have the vocabulary to name these feelings. Our Identifying Feelings worksheet helps improve a child’s emotional granularity by asking them to describe what they experience when they feel certain emotions.

Understanding how certain emotions can cause specific behaviors and reactions can put children in control of how they respond to their environment.

How to use it:

1. Have your child choose an emotion at random or pick one that they’re feeling at the moment.
2. Encourage them to express how their bodies and minds feel visually or in words—whatever they are most comfortable with.
3. Ask them to reflect on what makes them feel this specific emotion. Is it a person? A place? An event? Use these to better understand their triggers.

Emotional Ups and Downs Worksheet

For younger children, fluctuating emotions can be confusing and even terrifying. Our Emotional Ups and Downs worksheet helps children process the natural ups and downs of their emotions each day.

Unlike adults, children have a harder time processing sudden changes in their mood. It can feel chaotic, disorienting, and overwhelming. Our worksheet aims to familiarize children with the concept of affective variability, or understanding that different emotions can co-exist [*].

How to use it:

1. Start by introducing the concept of balance: how two or more things can exist at once. That includes emotions.
2. Start by celebrating your child’s “ups.” Ask about a time they experienced a positive emotion and felt proud of themselves. How did others respond to them? What did this positive emotion feel like physically?
3. Gently pivot to a “down” moment they experienced in the same week. Validate their emotions by walking through what your child experienced to make them feel that way.
4. Together, reflect on how both the ups and downs affected their behaviors. Reinforce good habits and suggest coping skills for when your child experiences another “down.”

A Time I Felt Worksheet

Helping a child process their emotions by recalling an event can be more useful than a foreign or unfamiliar example. When they’re able to unpack a specific and memorable experience, they can look back on their behaviors with a sense of ownership and understand that they are in control of their reactions.

Our A Time I Felt worksheet asks children to reflect on a specific memory as a way to build on their sense of self.

How to use it:

1. Ask your child to pick a specific moment to focus on. It could be when they won their first soccer game at school (a time they felt happy) or when they had to move away from their old city (a time they felt sad).
2. Then, have your child retell the story. If they’re feeling stuck, ask open-ended questions, such as “Who was with you?” “What did you feel in your body?”
3. Start analyzing their internal experience. Unpack their thoughts and feelings from when they experienced this moment. Then, consider the behavioral response to this moment. If it was a happy moment, did they jump for joy? If it was a frustrating moment, did they throw something across the room?
4. Reflect on the moment as a whole. If it was a positive experience, ask your child to think about what they can do to repeat that outcome. If it was a negative experience, brainstorm alternate paths and coping skills.

Affect Labeling

Affect labeling is the process of naming your emotions [*]. Simply articulating that “I’m feeling scared,” or “I’m a bit anxious,” already reduces activity in the amygdala because it adds space between the child and the emotion.

Our Affect Labeling handout explains how affect labeling works, why it works, provides simple phrases to try, and lists ways to practice.

How to use it:

1. Use simple analogies to explain why affect labeling works. For example, you might liken it to the act of inputting a code to turn off an alarm. When you label your emotions, the fight-or-flight signals in your brain quiet down.
2. Review the phrases to try, then practice using them through role play. Introduce hypothetical scenarios. For example, “Your friend just told you they don’t want to play with you. How might that make you feel?”
3. Find ways to integrate affect labeling in your child’s daily life. If they’re showing signs of distress or anxiety, take a minute to name the feeling.

How are You Feeling Chart

Sometimes, a simple check-in can set the tone for a child’s day. You can place our How Are You Feeling Chart in the classroom or at home for an opportunity to gauge your child’s mindset for the day.

When your child has ample opportunity to name their emotions, they move beyond the broadness of “good” or “bad” and improve their emotional granularity. Children who can differentiate between similar emotions are less likely to experience behavioral problems and have better opportunities to emotionally regulate [*]. 

How to use it:

1. Mount the chart somewhere accessible—your child’s bedroom door or in a living space that everyone uses.
2. Check in with your child at the beginning and end of the day. You can also use the chart as a de-escalation tool.
3. When your child chooses an emotion, validate them without judgment and spend a few minutes reflecting.

Helping Kids Recognize, Understand, and Express Their Emotions

Finding simple ways to make our identifying emotions worksheets a natural part of your child’s day lays the foundation for a strong sense of self. When children are confident in their ability to express their emotions, they are more in control of their reactions and decisions.

Find other ways to help your child talk about what they’re feeling by taking a look at our feelings worksheets collection.

Sources:

1. North M, Huck J, Day E, Jorgensen A, & Richels K. “The relative importance of affect variability and mean levels of affect in predicting complex task performance.” Personality and Social Psychology, 2024.
2. Levy-Gigi E & Shamay-Tsoory S. “Affect labeling: The role of timing and intensity.” PLOS ONE, 2022.
3. Askelund A, Ask H, Havdahl A, & Hannigan L. “Exploring the differentiation of behavioural and emotional problems across childhood: A prospective longitudinal cohort study.” JCPP Advances, 2023.