Empathy Matching Game

Activity Overview

What is it like to be in someone else’s shoes? How can we use our growing knowledge of feelings and the way actions impact our feeling states to imagine the experiences of others? In this activity, students practice identifying and acknowledging the feelings that people have, while also thinking through how different scenarios can impact our feelings on a moment’s notice.

What You Need

• Empathy for Kids on Epic

• Empathy Matching Game Board

• Feelings Cards

• Crayons

• One die

• Game piece markers (counting bears, small figurines, Lego pieces)

Steps

1. Watch Empathy for Kids on Epic with your student. Discuss the meaning of empathy and how we use it to connect with how people around us might be feeling.

2. Play the Empathy Matching Game with your student. Taking turns, roll the die and move your game piece marker to the corresponding number of spaces.

3. Allow the student to read the scenario that is landed on. If they are unable to, the grown-up can read and the student will think about how the person might be feeling in the scenario. The student then chooses a feelings card that they feel matches the way the person in the scenario might feel.

4. Encourage discussion about each scenario, and the link to how you might feel if you were placed in a similar situation. Color in the scenario box that you’ve just completed with any color, to mark you have already discussed it.

5. Continue taking turns until game play is finished! Revisit the game over the next few days to see how many more boxes you can color in.

Guiding Questions

• How can we tell how someone else is feeling?

• Have you ever felt like that before? When?