Feelings Lapbook

I have seen a lot of lapbooks on Pinterest which look great fun to make and work on. A lapbook is basically a folder for children to work on a particular topic. I have seen topic lapbooks, number lapbooks, literacy lapbooks and I thought I would have a go at an Emotions or Feelings lapbook. The ones I have seen seem to use a folder which I cannot source in the UK as the lapbook appears to be an American initiative. I have made mine with a cardboard envelope folder (document wallet). You could of course use a large sheet of strong card.

Here is how I made mine.

Now for the contents. There are so many things you can put into your lapbook and you could even use all the free resources on the site to create your own but if you want templates and things ready to download, print and laminate then you can purchase this from this link: Lapbook contents download.

Here is what is in my lapbook:

And here is what it looks like finished.

There is so much you can do with this once finished:

• Emotional register – child picks the circle face and sticks to the body image.
• Match the emotion word – child picks the emotion word and matches to their emotion face.
• Draw emotion faces – child can use the flip book to practise different facial expressions.
• Explore physical reactions to emotions – child marks off areas on the body shape where they feel their emotions – eg headache, butterflies, heart beating fast.
• Explore feelings further by scaling them with the thermometer.
• Explore feelings further by using the laminated thinking bubble – what are their thoughts when feeling an emotion?
• Explore feelings further by using the laminated speech bubble – what might they say when they are feeling an emotion?
• Explore feelings further by using the ‘How would you feel if?’ prompt cards.
• Learn to name emotions with the game.
• Learn to make the emotion face with the game.
• Learn to understand what makes them feel that way with the game.
• Use the calming down wheel to discuss regulation strategies.
• Play a pairs game by printing two sets of the emotion circles and two sets of the emotion words.
• Use the feelings book to prompt discussion on different emotions.

There are so many things you can do and this is just an example. Another addition I would like to have added is a mirror, but I ran out of room. You could certainly pop a little mirror in one of the pockets. I am going to put my emotion circles and emotion cards in little plastic bags before inserting into the pockets.

You will need some sticky velcro for the circle faces and emotion cards. You will also need some keyring circles which you can purchase from Amazon, for the feelings flipbook. I tend to buy a lot because they are handy for keeping things together.