Acting out emotions, identities and social situations can be a great way for children to gain an understanding of the importance of emotion, identity and social situations, in social interactions. Not only is it helpful to practice acting out certain scenarios by making specific facial expressions and moving your body in a particular way, it is also beneficial to see others act out these scenarios and search for clues in the scene (facial expressions and body language) that will provide information about what is happening.

People who are good at interpreting facial expressions can better anticipate what others will do. They are also more “prosocial,” or helpful towards others.

This game facilitates the child’s awareness of how emotion, identity and social situation can be conveyed through faces!

Steps:

1. You can make teams or play in pairs or even individually, While this game is best player with 2 or more players, you can decide combinations based on number of participants

2. The designated child will act out an emotion/ character/ situation that the opposing team or individual has given him. The other team members will try and guess what the actor is portraying and when they guess correctly, the next actor can have a turn

3. It may help to initiate this activity with basic emotions like happy, sad, upset, angry etc. before building in the more complex scenarios of characters/ situations