Preschool Toddler
File Folder GamesHolidaysPrintables
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Christmas is coming y’all and I can’t wait!
I love the holiday season and if I’m around, you can bet the Christmas music and holiday-themed activities are going to make their first appearance nice and early.
This one, for instance, was one that I knew I wanted to make months ago when my youngest first started learning about emotions.
She, of course, was super excited to see Santa represented and I am way more excited than I should be that it is now socially acceptable to start busing out the Christmas games!
With this fun file folder game, your child will cover a whole host of emotions and their facial expressions including scared, excited, sad, worried, happy, angry, and shocked.
They’ll also work on associating those facial expressions with the name of each emotion.
Assembling the Santa’s Emotion Game
You’ll use the same basic supplies to make this game as you do with all of our other file folder games.
- A manila file folder
- Scissors
- Clear contact paper
- Laminator (optional)
- Velcro dots
- The Santa’s emotions printable (below)
Now, technically, you can put this game together in one of two ways: with words or without.
If your children are smaller or you just feel like they would do better without the labels then, by all means, print the Santa faces out twice and have them simply match the sets of Santa faces together.
If you’d like to use the labels to work on a little bit of reading and vocabulary at the same time as we did, go ahead and print out both the labels and the Santa faces and cut each of them out.
Use some of your clear contact paper to attach the cover of your game to the front of your folder and then continue with the contact paper by attaching the labels to the inside flaps of your folders.
When those are attached, run your Santa faces through your laminator to add a little bit of durability to those pieces.
Finally, add your Velcro dots. Attach one side of the Velcro (either hook or loop) to the back of each Santa face. It doesn’t matter which side you use as long as you use the same side for each Santa face.
Attach the other side of the Velcro to the inside of your folder right above each of the labels.
Using the Santa’s Emotion Game
When your game is ready to go, give your child the Santa faces and talk about how they can decipher the emotion simply by looking at the facial expression that Santa is making.
Ask your child to look at Santa and see if they can figure out how he is feeling.
When they think they’ve got it, have them match the Santa face to the correct label before moving onto the next one.
