14 Emotions Playdough Mats (Fun Social and Emotional Learning!)

Emotions Playdough Mats ( Playdough Face Mats): a fun activity that will help kids work on their social and emotional skills, their creativity, and their fine motor skills.

Roll, poke, flatten, shape. Let’s give those little hands something really fun to do, while we help them build social and emotional skills.     

Benefits of Playing with Emotions Playdough Mats

Printable emotions playdough mats serve as a tool that will help our kids develop a set of skills:

• Social and Emotional Development
  • Practicing / Learning Emotion Recognition
    Learning to recognize emotions through our facial expressions (nonverbal communication) is an important part of our social and emotional development. These face mats, labeled with different moods and feelings, can be a fun addition to your kids’ or students’ emotions activities
  • Emotional Self-Regulation
    Playing with playdough is an effective calm-down activity that kids can turn to when feeling overwhelmed by big emotions. And, as an added bonus, these mats portray different moods, so they are a very relevant self-regulation activity.
  • Talk About Emotions
    This activity can help as a conversation starter to discuss feelings and emotions.
    For example: “Let’s make a sad face. How do you know this kid is sad. How do the eyes look? And the mouth? What about the eyebrows? Why do you think this kid may be sad? Can you remember when was the last time you felt that way? Why did you feel sad?”
• Fine Motor Skills Development
  Playing with playdough helps children’s motor skills development as it:
  • Strengthens fingers and hand muscles
  • Improves dexterity (which will help purposes like writing and drawing)
  • Helps practice hand-eye coordination
• Fosters creativity

Playdough Face Mats

These playdough face mats are labeled with 14 different feelings, emotions, or moods: sad, happy, tired, surprised, scared, angry, shy, bored, loved, excited, lonely, hurt, worried, proud.

• Print your face mats (blank faces)
• Laminate them
• Start playing!

Check out these emotion mats in the store ⇒ (here)

These playdough mats have been very popular at home. And, they are a fun way to start conversations about feelings with younger kids. 

Other Social-Emotional Resources for Kids

• Emotions Flashcards
• List of Emotions for Kids 
• Emotions & Facial Expression
• Feelings Thermometer (how to use an emotions chart)
• Anger Thermometer for Kids (11 templates & activities)
• Anger Iceberg for Kids
• Mood Charts for Kids (Mood Trackers- free printables)
• Emotions Wheels for Kids (free PDF)