Printable Emotion Cards
Eight faces and eight words to cut out, so your child can name what they feel before they can explain it.
No account, no email address, no watermark.
What's in the download
- Eight faces drawn in simple lines: joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, tiredness, and calm.
- The eight words written in Century Gothic, the letterform taught in American classrooms.
- The eight control cards, face and word together: this is how your child checks their own work.
- Faces that are deliberately geometric, with no age, gender, or skin tone: every child can see themselves in them.
Why this material
A three-year-old feels everything, very strongly, and often has only one word to say so. Naming an emotion does not make it disappear, but it stops being a nameless storm: it becomes something you can point to, and so something you can talk about. These cards are presented in three steps, like all Montessori nomenclature material, and the control of error is in the card, never in your voice.
Activities that use it
Naming Pictures
A handful of animal or object cards, and the three-period lesson that makes words stick for good.
Object and Picture Matching
Setting the real spoon on the photo of a spoon: the bridge between the world and its images.
Real Picture Books
A book of real photographs, an adult fully present: words arrive through the lap.