MOLO Hack: The Emoji Mood Board

Like many children, my two struggle with their emotions fairly often. School is demanding, they are tired, they are hungry, or frustrated, or sad. But they don’t always know how to tell me that, so end up acting out. It’s easy to snap “calm down” or “stop being silly” without really considering whether they actually have the tools to do that.  So I had a think about what I could do to help them understand these big feelings, and do something useful or proactive with them. I wanted some kind of mood board which would help them to realise what their feelings were, and give them practical steps which would teach them how to cope with them.

There didn’t seem to be much out there to help, so I made my own. Introducing…

The Emoji Mood Board!

Because kids love emojis, right? Well, mine do anyway! So I had one of these peg frames from The Range, and bought some emoji party props from eBay for £4 and on the reverse of them, I wrote some ideas for what they could do when they are feeling tired, silly, angry, happy, worried or sad. Obviously these are tailored to my children’s needs and the things that are often at the root of the overwhelm. Yours could be completely different.

I posted my idea in The Motherload® Facebook Community:

My kids struggle with their emotions and I spend much of my time telling the eldest to calm down because he’s being crazy or getting angry, and the youngest to stop whining because she is tired or sad. I realised that wasn’t very useful, as they don’t always recognise their own emotions or know what to do with them. They’re only 5 and 7 – I’m 45 and I still don’t know what to do with my emotions half the time! So anyway, I bought some emoji party props for £4 and a picture frame with pegs from The Range for about £6 and have made them an emoji mood board. If they are feeling tired, silly, angry, happy, worried or sad, they can take a card and choose to do one of the things on the back to help them feel better. I’m hoping it helps them to understand their emotions and learn what they can do to cope with them. Sharing it with you lovely MOLOs in case you’re in the same emotional quagmire as me!

Lots of members wanted to try the idea and to share it, so here we go! If you make your own emoji mood board, I’d love to see it. Hope it helps! I showed mine to the children after school and they loved it. They were on good form so we haven’t needed to use it yet, but I’m sure the opportunity will come very soon…

Image credit: Alison McGarragh-Murphy