Working on social emotional learning with kids? This emotions monster I Spy page is a frightfully fun activity for developing an awareness of emotions with a monster theme. Use the printable page to identify emotions and facial expressions. This emotions monster worksheet uses Frankenstein faces, but it’s a hit for all monster fans! Add this emotions worksheet to your Halloween occupational therapy activities.
This monster emotions printable is a great identifying emotions printable.
Emotion Monsters
During the weeks leading up to Halloween, all things monsters are a fun theme for kids. These emotion monsters are a friendly way to develop social emotional learning with kids and make a great addition to social emotional learning in children.
You can add this printable Halloween worksheet to our list of Halloween occupational therapy activities.
How to use this emotion monsters worksheet
This worksheet is a fun way to develop several skills. First, print off the PDF below. You can enter your email address into the form and grab the PDF from your email inbox.
Next, either print off pages for each child OR laminate the emotion monsters worksheet and use dry erase markers to complete the page. Another alternative is to slide the page into a page protector sheet.
Then, get ready to help children develop social emotional skills!
When developing emotional growth in children, engaging activities are key! The basic emotions used in this worksheet can give you a starting point to cover so many emotional skills and coping strategies.
Show students the various emotions that the Frankenstein faces are expressing. You can use this worksheet in various ways to work on a variety of skills that develop self-awareness in children:
Self-Regulation Monsters
You’ll notice that this monster I Spy page has a top portion with monster faces showing a variety of facial expressions. Then at the bottom is a color coded key.
Users can find the matching facial expressions and then color them in as they find matches. The facial expressions try to follow the Zones of Regulation self-regulation color themes and color concepts of the popular self-regulation program.
This free worksheet builds an exploration of colors in the zones program through repetition as they look for and color in the emotion monsters.
This is a great opportunity to talk to children about feelings, identifying how they feel in different scenarios, and coming up with self-regulation tools to address various emotions that impact functioning.
Emotions such as frustration, anger, sadness aren’t “wrong”, and it’s important to teach children that they will feel all kinds of emotions and it’s ok! Try using terms like calm monster, angry monster, sad monster, or glad monster to give children terms when using this emotional skills worksheet.
These identifying terms (and seeing them used in a fun and low-stress manner) can help with impulse control, frustration, and acting out at home and in the classroom.
Then, take the emotional regulation strategies a step further and ask kids: How do you deal with the emotional monsters inside of you? (Emphasizing that emotional monsters are not bad, it’s just a way to give feelings a name.)
Monster Feelings I Spy Activity
Use the worksheet to work on visual perceptual skills to find matching facial expressions. This Monster I Spy activity addresses a variety of skills:
- Visual discrimination
- Visual form constancy
- Visual memory
- Visual attention
- Visual scanning
Practice facial expressions with monster emotions
Use the monster emotions activity to work on practicing facial expressions. Children can find all of the monster emotions and color in the matching monsters. Then they can copy the facial expression and identify a time they have felt that feeling.
This is a good way to practice communication or self-regulation strategies, too. When children can read the expressions of others around them, it builds awareness, empathy skills, and even school readiness. Kids can better understand that we all have a lot of emotions and big feelings happen all the time. This fun monster theme makes it fun to explore those various emotions.
Identify feelings with a monster theme
Use the monster emotions worksheet to work on identifying feelings. Ask children to find the matching images and then ask them to name the emotion that the facial expression represents. Kids will love this fun way to work on emotional vocabulary!
This monster worksheet is a creative way to get kids talking about emotions. When we teach children how to figure out WHAT they are feeling, WHY they are having that emotion, and HOW to make better choices, we build their self-regulation, or emotional regulation skills so they can make appropriate choices and manage emotions in a given situation.
Or, just use the printable Halloween activity as an identifying emotions worksheet.
Ask the user to move through the monster faces and identify emotions across the page. You can ask them to find all of the monsters who are showing a sad face, for example.
Fine Motor Emotion Monsters Activity
The nice thing about this worksheet is that it can be used to work on so many areas. Fine motor skills is no exception! Rather than coloring, ask students to place a marker on the monster’s face that matches the emotion they are looking for. Try using these items:
- Coins to work on in-hand manipulation skills
- Beads to work on separation of the sides of the hand skills
- Small pieces of paper to work on scissor skills and neat pincer grasp skills
Even coloring is a fine motor skill that is addressed with this creative worksheet. Asking children to color in the lines and fill in all of the given areas addresses pencil control and endurance in fine motor skill work.
Free Emotions Monster Worksheet
Want to add this printable monsters worksheet to your therapy toolbox for an approachable way to cover emotional growth in kids? Just enter your email address into the form below. You’ll receive access to the printable PDF so you can work on these areas today!
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Add this monster emotion worksheet to our Pumpkin theme fine motor kit to round out the skill-building!
Grab the Pumpkin Fine Motor Kit for more coloring, cutting, and eye-hand coordination activities with a Pumpkin theme! It includes:
- 7 digital products that can be used any time of year- has a “pumpkins” theme
- 5 pumpkin scissor skills cutting strips
- Pumpkin scissor skills shapes- use in sensory bins, math, sorting, pattern activities
- 2 pumpkin visual perception mazes with writing activity
- Pumpkin “I Spy” sheet – color in the outline shapes to build pencil control and fine motor strength
- Pumpkin Lacing cards – print, color, and hole punch to build bilateral coordination skills
- 2 Pumpkin theme handwriting pages – single and double rule bold lined paper for handwriting practice
Work on underlying fine motor and visual motor integration skills so you can help students excel in handwriting, learning, and motor skill development.
You can grab this Pumpkin Fine Motor kit for just $6!
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
