'How I feel' worksheet

A “How I feel” worksheet is a therapeutic tool that therapists and parents can use to support children in understanding their feelings. 

This guide to the “How I feel” worksheet provides a brief overview of how to help children understand their feelings, feeling exercises for kids, and ways therapists can use the free “How am I feeling?” worksheet. 

Helping children understand feelings and emotions

Understanding feelings and emotions is an important part of childhood development, leading to overall well-being, self-regulation, impulse control, resilience, independence, and the ability to make friends. 

However, learning to understand and regulate emotions is a process that differs among children depending on genetics, temperament, and home environment. 

Poorly regulated feelings can lead to tantrums, anxiety, meltdowns, and other disruptive behaviors, which is why using a “How am I feeling?” worksheet can be helpful.

The key steps to helping kids to understand and regulate their feelings include:

• Validating their feelings: Let them know it's OK to have and express their emotions. 

• Practicing recognizing feelings and emotions: Use feelings exercises and check-ins, such as a feelings wheel or “How are you feeling today?” worksheet, to help children become comfortable with regularly identifying their feelings. 

• Acknowledging changes in behavior: Talk to kids about how to notice signs they might be experiencing a big emotion. You might also help them to identify what triggers their emotions. 

• Developing a strong connection: Encourage children to talk about their feelings and provide comfort and reassurance to help them create a secure attachment, co-regulate, and develop the confidence to express their emotions more freely. 

• Modeling: When checking in about a feeling, it might be helpful to identify your feelings or share how you might handle a big feeling to model emotional regulation skills.

• Role playing: You can practice expressing feelings to normalize talking about emotions and provide different ways children can do so in the future. 

• Positive reinforcement: Provide praise when children talk about their feelings and when they have a good day.  

Feelings exercises for kids

Beyond a “How I feel” worksheet, there are various activities to help children understand their feelings, including:

Feelings chart 

This activity allows children to identify their feelings using visual prompts. Kids match facial expressions to different emotions, such as sadness, happiness, anger, excitement, and fear.

Emotions wheel 

This activity lists different emotions in a circle, and kids are prompted to identify their feelings, such as boredom, worry, surprise, anger, happiness, sadness, calm, and confusion. 

Color your feelings 

This activity prompts children to pick a color for each emotion. Then, they might identify why they chose that color and where they feel the emotion in their bodies. 

Coping skills 

This exercise helps kids work through overwhelming feelings by suggesting different coping strategies, such as taking deep breaths, moving their bodies, doing something different, drawing or writing about their feelings, asking for help, or talking to a parent or teacher.

Body check-in 

This exercise involves closing your eyes and thinking about your body's feelings. 

For example, if the child identifies that their heart is racing, you might ask them what that tells them about their feelings.

Feelings charades 

In a group setting, kids write down feelings on a card, and the group must guess how the person is feeling. 

Understanding my feelings 

This exercise involves identifying an emotion and then working through a series of prompts that help kids understand their feelings. 

For example, they could name their feeling, describe what led to the feeling, how they acted on their feelings, and how that went. These prompts are included in the free downloadable “How I feel” worksheet.

Steps for using the “How I feel” worksheet 

Therapists can download and use the “How I feel” worksheet in several ways:

• Use the “How do you feel?” worksheet as a visual aid to identify feelings and facial expressions

• Use the “How am I feeling?” worksheet as an icebreaker in a therapy session to build rapport and structure the session 

• Use the worksheet to explore how emotions and feelings might change in different situations and environments 

• Use the “How do I feel today?” worksheet as a handout for the client to complete between sessions and then debrief at their next therapy appointment

Sources

• Pelini, S. (n.d.). An age-by-age guide to helping kids manage emotions. 

• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2022). Teaching your child about feelings. 

• Weir, K. (2023). How to help kids understand and manage their emotions. 

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