Emotions Playdough Mats: How to Use for Hand-On Learning (Free)

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Emotions playdough mats are fantastic ways to help your kids enjoy hands-on learning fun! These free printable activities are awesome ways to provide your children with opportunities for building both fine motor skills AND emotional intelligence.

With these feelings playdough mats available in both color and black-and-white, your little ones can explore emotions through creative play and learning.

I'm super excited to share my tips for using and ideas for enjoying. Learn more about these awesome activities and get your free set today!

RELATED: Have MORE fun with playdough and emotions with this free printable pack!

Why These Playdough Emotion Mats Really Work

When I worked as a mental health therapist with children (and with my own 5 boys!), I frequently used hands-on tools, like stuffed animals, dolls, playdough and coloring activities, to open up conversation and teach lessons about emotional awareness and other social-emotional skills.

These playdough faces mats are perfect for reinforcing lessons presented in books and videos, plus they provide your kids something to focus on while chatting about different emotions and situations.

Hands-on activities make abstract concepts, like feelings, easier for kids to understand and apply to real-life situations plus gain greater emotional control.

These resources are wonderful for building and encouraging growth mindset skills, and you can pair them with books about emotions to extend the learning fun!

RELATED: Get this free pack of Emotional Intelligence Activities for kids!

What's Inside These Playdough Emotion Mats

This free printable pack includes 20 pages total - 10 in color and 10 in black-and-white. Your kids will learn about feelings through different facial expressions that look a lot like popular emojis.

Each page includes a name, "This face is…" prompt, facial expression, and dotted lines for writing practice.

The emotions included in this printable set are:

• happy
• sad
• scared
• surprised
• shy
• loving
• frustrated
• angry
• nervous
• excited

RELATED: 10 Reasons your kids need to learn about emotions

Making the Most of Your Playdough Mats

To get the most out of these emotion playdough mats, I recommend taking a few simple steps.

• You can laminate your printables OR use dry erase pockets (or page protector) so your kids can use these activities again and again!
• Use dry erase markers to draw unique and creative expressions
• Use those dry erase markers to practice copying feeling words
• Challenge your kids to think of different emotions - and create their own expressions on the back of the pages
• Use these emotion playdough mats as conversation starters or writing prompts for simple words, sentences, or have your kids tell you a story and you jot it down for them

RELATED: Anger Management Skills for Kids

Creative Ways to Play and Learn

With the mats in color, you can try to match your playdough to the colors on the feelings faces. Or get creative and use what you like or have!

With the black-and-white mats, feel free to use your imagination. Pick a variety of colors - create a rainbow of playdough (my boys LOVE to do this!) and add your own special touch.

You can place the playdough in your hands and roll back and forth to make "snakes" (that's what we've always called them). Or roll small balls.

Another idea is to place a large amount of playdough on the mat and use a rolling pin to flatten. Then, use a dull knife or other tool to "cut out" the pieces. It's such a fun way for little hands to make these play dough faces!

Oh, and you can totally use the black-and-white playdough mats for coloring fun. Print out extra copies to color in the different faces. Find examples of each face in movies, books, and other print materials. Compare the facial expressions, and make the faces with your kids!

RELATED: 10 Simple yet powerful activities to help kids with anxiety

Get Your Free Pack of Emotions Playdough Mats

High five! You're so close to getting and enjoying these playdough mats featuring feelings!

This FREE printables pack includes 20 pages (10 color and 10 black-and white) of emotions play dough mats. Wow - that's a whole bunch of hands-on learning fun with playdough activities!

You can print as many copies as you need to enjoy with your homeschool, classroom, or co-op. If you have co-workers or friends who may like to use these free printables, please share this post. Thanks so much for your cooperation and sharing!

To get these FREE Emotions Playdough Mats, all you need to do is subscribe to Rock Your Homeschool.

⭐️ You’ll receive an email with a PDF file, along with a password to open the VIP Resource Library to all RYHS freebies.

Plus, you’ll get emails with ideas, resources, and encouragement to make life and learning fun 🙂

(Psst! Current RYHS members just need to access the VIP Resource Library page and enter the password in your welcome email.)

⭐️ Get your Free Emotions Playdough Mats Pack now! ⭐️

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