Feelings colors: a free feelings chart for kids

A feelings chart gives a child something to point to when the words won’t come. This one uses the pendant colors from Lumingrove, the world of The Adventures of Niko and Lira, where a pendant glows with how its wearer feels: gold for happy, blue for sad, red for angry and pink for love, plus five more. It’s free to print and color in together, and there’s nothing to sign up for.

What does each color mean?

Every Lumi gets a pendant on their eighth birthday. When no feeling is showing, it rests at a soft warm white, like a tiny lantern. When a feeling comes, the light changes color, and each feeling moves in its own way.

Book One, A Light for Tavi, names the first four. No color is a bad one. In Lumingrove, everyone feels every color sometimes.

How do you use a feelings chart at home?

The CDC’s advice for parents of 2- to 4-year-olds is to name a feeling out loud, in simple words, so a child learns the words to describe it, and it suggests a feelings chart to help. A few ways to do that with this one:

• At bedtime, ask, “What color is your pendant tonight?” Point to it together, then tell them yours. It takes a minute, and it fits right after the story.
• In a big moment, name what you see and check: “Your face looks red. Are you feeling angry?” If you guess wrong, your child may tell you so. That’s the point.
• Keep every color allowed. The CDC suggests letting children know you accept all their feelings, not only the happy ones, while making clear that not every behavior is OK. A red pendant is fine. Throwing the blocks isn’t.

For the youngest, start with the four colors from the book. Add the others when a child starts asking about them.

How does it help a child notice someone else’s feelings?

A pendant shows on the outside, so the colors are as much about noticing someone else as naming your own. That’s what Book One is about: Niko and Lira stop guessing what their baby brother wants and start watching him.

The Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning suggests giving children lots of chances to name feelings in other people, and pausing a story on a page to ask, “What do you think he is feeling?” and “How can you tell?” Picture books are good for this because the face is right there. Try it with any book you’re reading, or with the look-inside pages of A Light for Tavi, where Niko’s and Lira’s pendants are glowing red and violet.

Children who like games can play Pendant Feelings, which shows a Lumi’s face and asks which color matches. It needs no reading.

How can teachers use it?

• Morning check-in: put the chart on the wall and let each child point to a color at circle time. Children who don’t want to share can point to the warm white.
• Make a face: a grown-up makes a happy or sad face, and the children guess the feeling and its color. Then swap. CSEFEL’s handout has this game and a mirror version for younger children.
• Color the feelings: the coloring page has Niko and Lira showing the four feelings from the book, each with a pendant to color in its feeling’s color.

Book One’s questions and activities go further, with a “Watch, don’t guess” game built on the story.

Is this the same as The Color Monster?

Anna Llenas’s The Color Monster also gives each feeling a color, and it’s a lovely book for sorting out your own feelings. The colors aren’t all the same (in that book, calm is green and fear is black), so if a child knows both, let them choose. What matters is having the words, and a picture to point to.