SEL (social-emotional learning) is how an individual acquires and applies knowledge and skills to develop a healthy identity. It includes emotional regulation, empathy, and interpersonal skills.

The ability to recognize facial expressions holds significant importance in social-emotional development. This fundamental skill enhances communication and deepens emotional comprehension. By guiding children to identify and decipher facial cues, we equip them with essential tools for managing social encounters and building healthy relationships.

To help engage your students in a hands-on exploration of emotions, we have created an Animate Your Emotions pack of cut-out facial feature worksheets. Designed to promote SEL while sparking creativity and imaginative play, these worksheets offer a fun, interactive way for children to explore and express various emotions. 

The worksheets feature various facial features in diverse skin tones and shapes, including eyes, eyebrows, noses, mouths and hairstyles. Students can cut out these elements and mix and match them to create expressive faces that reflect different emotions, from happiness and excitement to sadness and anger. 

The exploration doesn’t stop there. By incorporating these expressive creations into a stop motion project, students can breathe life into their characters in the form of an animated movie. Stop motion animation is a filmmaking technique in which physical objects are repeatedly moved and photographed. When these photographs are played back in quick succession, as a movie, the objects appear to move independently of the human hands that manipulated them. 

If you want to use stop motion animation in the classroom, the HUE Animation Studio kit is the complete movie-making solution for children aged 7+. It includes a camera, software for macOS and Windows, downloadable activities and step-by-step instructions for creating animated videos from script to screen. 

The Animate Your Emotions worksheets can be used with any creative medium your students wish. They can be printed on paper, cut out and animated as they are, or students can use them as templates to guide them to recreate the facial expressions with felt sheets, modeling clay, paint, pens, or pencils. 

Example sheets featuring annotated characters are provided to guide students on effectively conveying emotions through facial expressions. Students can be challenged to recreate and animate each emotion featured on the guide sheets by incrementally moving, replacing, and photographing every facial element. 

The Animate Your Emotions worksheets can be downloaded from TeachersPayTeachers.com, and the HUE blog has more information about using stop motion in the classroom. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or if you would like additional information. 

Further reading

• How to set up the HUE Animation Studio kit
• Digital Storytelling and HUE Animation
• Tips & tricks for making your first stop motion movie
• Getting Started with Stop Motion Studio for HUE | Software Tutorial

Richelle Ayers is the Global Social Media Manager and Content Co-Director for HUE. As a certified teacher in Texas, she holds teaching certificates in Elementary Education, ESL, Math and Special Education. As an award-winning teacher, Richelle’s teaching experience includes team leadership, mentoring, and presenting on topics such as Project-Based Learning (PBL) and STEM in the classroom.

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