Social Emotional Learning: Feelings Around the World, Untranslatable Emotions

Have you ever considered how differently people around the world might feel the same named emotions. The way I feel anger might be different than how it feels to you? We use the same name, but it means something unique to every person. That's a really deep concept, but this simple activity allows children to explore it in an easy way for themselves by introducing them to children around the world with emotions that don't have names in the English language. This is such a great conversation starter to let kids explore their feelings through words and coloring.

Includes:

6 characters from Japan, Amsterdam, the Philippines, Korea, India, and Zimbabwe that will each introduce an emotion from their native language along with a prompt such as:

"When I feel overwhelmed with love for someone (gigil), I can ask to show that love by _______."

There are 3 color coded examples, along with three blank squares to prompt conversations to fill in the blanks for each character's prompt.

Then there is the Match My Emotion activity. Each character is found on an otherwise blank page. Match their face to their body, recalling the emotion they felt, and then draw a scene around them that might show how they feel.