Empathy building activities for kids are a brilliant thing to introduce both in the classroom and a t home. Here are some great examples of ways to teach children about empathy.
Empathy building activities for kids can really help their emotional intelligence grow.
7 Interesting Empathy Building Activities For Kids
As a parent, you’ll always want the best for your child, and of course, also want to bring up your child with the best qualities- honesty, respectfulness, empathy and kindness among others.
One of the best ways to do just that and make sure your child develops these qualities is by getting them occupied with some activities and projects centered around them, and if that’s what you want help with, here’s a little something to get you started.
Read on to discover 7 super interesting and fun empathy building activities for kids that you can get your child to practise.
Empathy Building Activities for Kids
Guessing Emotions – empathy building activities for kids
This activity is incredibly easy and simple, and a fun way to get your child to understand different emotions, relate to them and in turn be more considerate and humble. Find old photos and pictures from random magazines or comic books, sit down with your kid and browse through each of them, trying to understand the emotions and feelings in each image.
Based on the context, you can also encourage them to create a general outline of a story around his emotion and what they must be thinking and feeling at that moment. This activity is actually so much fun that you’ll find your child wanting to do it again and again, and best of all, it doesn’t even get repetitive and boring.
Empathy Building Activities for Kids can be lots of fun.
Empathy Building Activities for Kids
Wear Someone Else’s Shoes
One of the best ways to get your child to be more considerate and respectful towards others and their emotions is to have them experience things from a different perspective. As a parent, you can do this by brainstorming or building certain situations that involve your child and someone else- you can use events from past experience for this as well.
Next, get your child to understand and evaluate the emotions he’s experiencing at that moment, note it down and then wear the other person’s shoes (metaphorically of course) and get them to look at things from the other person’s perspective. This practise may take a bit of effort on your part and may initiate some discussions too, but it is actually an excellent way to help build your child’s empathy.
Optical Illusions – empathy building activities for kids
To teach your child about how there are different ways to look at the same situation, and how what something might be good for him may not always be good for someone else, use the power of optical illusions.
Look up some simple but fun optical illusions online- preferably those that you can print out.
Print them out on a sheet of paper and hand them over to your child. Help them to understand how things appear different when you look at them from a different angle or when you hold the paper in a different way, and emotions and situations work in a similar fashion.
Role Playing – empathy building activities for kids
Role playing is yet another fantastic way to help build your child’s empathy and inculcate the habits of thankfulness and gratefulness in them. This activity can be exceptionally helpful if you’re having trouble with your child’s tantrums and entitlement behavior.
Start by listing out a number of scenarios and have your child enact it out from different perspectives.
For instance, you could recreate a scene of someone walking down the hallway, tripping and falling down. Ask your child to enact out how they would react to such a situation. Then, ask them to be the person who falls down, and understand the other side of the situation. List down a few of such social scenarios which you both can then recreate and practise at home.
If your child has a playdate, this game could prove to be even more fun.
Feelings Collage – Empathy Building Activities for Kids
Creative empathy building activities for kids.
The feelings collage is another fun activity you can try out if your child has trouble enacting out scenarios and is a bit shy. Start by labeling different sheets of paper in different emotions- happy, sad, angry etc. Set them aside and hand over a bunch of magazines or story books to your child, and ask them to cut out the images of people who express any of these emotions.
Then, once they have a handful of cutouts ready for each emotion, ask them to begin the collage work and start pasting each image on the appropriate sheet of paper. To take this activity further, you can also encourage your child to be descriptive about why they feels that cutout represents that emotion.
Empathy Building Activities for Kids
The Kindness Heart – empathy building activities for kids
And here’s yet another interesting and exciting activity you could get your kid hooked on to. Give your child a sheet of paper and ask him to cut it out into the shape of a heart. Then, fill it up with red color and label it in the name of a person he knows. Repeat this multiple times for different people and set them aside.
Then, ask him to fill up each heart with the good qualities about that particular person. This is one of the empathy building activities for kids that will help your kid understand how to appreciate the good side of the person, which can be incredibly helpful as an exercise if he is experiencing trouble getting along with someone- a classmate, a sibling or a member of the family. This activity can have profound social and emotional benefits to offer.
To take this further, you can also get your child to stick a picture of the person in the center of the heart, and lend it that visual element as well.
Empathy Building Activities for Kids – Appreciation Box
Last, but definitely not the least, an appreciation box is another excellent empathy building activity that can also help your child adopt a more positive mindset towards life, and will encourage him to be thankful and grateful for everything that he already possesses.
I juts absolute love this idea and suggest when coaching kids in therapy all the time.
Start by getting your kid to color and decorate a small box that will be called ‘The Appreciation Box.’ Set this box on his desk or in the living room and as a regular practise, get him to drop a note with a little thank you when something good happens to him.
I do hope you have enjoyed reading about these Empathy Building Activities for Kids please do let me know if you give then a go.
Further reading on Empathy Building Activities for Kids & how to develop a child’s compassion
Don’t forget to have read of my Create your own Kindness book which is packed with kindness acts for kids
Random acts of kindness for kids in lockdown
