My Experience with the Emotion Faces Matching Game in a Childcare Center
My Experience with the Emotion Faces Matching Game in a Childcare Center
by Dewi Griffith Ph.D
Getting Ready for the Game
As soon as I decided to use Matching Game with the preschool children who attended our childcare centre, I knew what I needed to do to get ready: to make the emotion cards.
Each card has a different facial emotion (happy, sad, angry, funny and surprised). Because they are brightly coloured, they are easy to spot, which is very important for young learning (Piaget's stages of cognitive development, 1964).
Setting Up the Room
First, I rearranged the room to set up a spacious circle for us to sit together, which gave the kids ample space to see each other clearly in front and reminded them to face each other during our exercises to play together.
I laid down a big rug in the middle of the circle and spread all the emotion cards on the rug face down.
The circle sitting arrangement made it easy for the kids and me to gather in the room, focus on the game, face one another, and interact closely – all very important to boost their social competence.
I also put some soft pouffes around the rug to make a nice place to sit.
Coordinating with my fellow educators was essential to make this game run smoothly.
We split up tasks—one educator helped with guiding the children as they took turns, while another observed and took notes on how each child responded.
This teamwork made the activity flow better and ensured that all children were engaged.
We also decided on a few hand signals to communicate without interrupting the game, like a thumbs-up to indicate a child needed encouragement.
Working with Other Educators
Best Tips and Tricks
Here are a few things I found particularly helpful:
Start with a Demo:
before we played the game, I showed the kids how to play: I picked up a card, made the face on it, and asked them to guess what emotion it was.
They were excited, and it created a great example.
Keep It Light:
The number of possible answers for a little kid can get pretty long for a young learner.
To keep things light and fun, we would give the kid the opportunity to guess more than once, telling them: ‘Okay, you can try again’ if they didn’t get it right before handing the next contestant the microphone.
Use Props:
Just in case anyone had forgotten how they felt from having made that face, I had a little mirror with me.
Each child could take the mirror and try out making the face to see how it looked from the front.
Challenges and How to Handle Them
One of the main challenges was that some of the kids had difficulty with the differentiation task, especially about recognising more ambiguous facial expressions such as ‘confusion’ or ‘contempt’.
To overcome this, we made sure that, for younger children, the game started with simple facial expressions and emotions.
The next issue we had was keeping the children focused on the task, particularly in a larger class.
We kept the game short and simple, divided into shorter rounds during which we left short breaks.
Get ready for some fun and learning!
Download this free template, perfect for printing and cutting into cards.
It's an easy way to engage children with interactive activities. Just click below and start creating memorable moments!
References and Further Reading
References
Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Basic Books.
Piaget, J. (1964). The Child's Conception of the World. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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