Make a face – Item 078

Make a face – Print out, laminate and cut out the cards. You could put some velcro on the back but I think a bit of blue tack will do the job nicely.

The ‘Make a Face’ resource includes:

• 1 face in 5 different skin tones
• 15 sets of eyes in 5 different skin tones
• 15 sets of mouths in 5 different skin tones
• A set of 40 Feelings vocabulary cards

There are so many wonderful possibilities for using this resource to teach emotional literacy. The aim of this resource is for children to begin to recognise facial expressions and talk about their feelings. This resource is also very good for early years settings and can be put into an area of provision, allowing children to experiment and make different faces. Can they match the eyes to the mouth? Can they tell you what the expression is that they have made? Parents would also find this resource helpful for their preschool children.

If all the pieces are laminated you can also use a dry wipe pen to practice different facial expressions and writing the feelings words.

Ways to use

• Explore different combinations of eyes and mouths and see if the child can come up with a feeling word.
• Can they find a relevant feeling word to put underneath?
• You can put a feeling word at the bottom and ask the child if they can make that expression
• Make a facial expression and ask the child if they can find the word.
• Ask them. ‘Can you make me a sad expression?’ ‘Can you make me an angry expression?’
• You could introduce other vocabulary for the faces they have made so instead of angry you could use furious or irate.
• Use the face mat without the cards and ask them to draw an angry face, sad face etc.
• Put some eyes on the mat and ask the child which mouth to use to make this face look angry, sad etc.
• You could put some eyes on the mat and ask the child to draw the mouth or vice versa to make the expression look angry, sad etc.
• Make a expression and ask them to write the feeling word in the box.
• Print two copies of the words and play matching pairs.
• You could put the word cards face down, pick one and see if together you can make the face.

These are the skin colours available