Bruttney Derissaint

LEI 4724
Activity: Emotion Charades
Source: Emma (Masters in special education, March 28, 2011. Friendshipcircle.org)
Equipment Needed: Pieces of paper, pen or color pencils

Activity Description:
1. Have your participants write down feeling words on pieces of paper rather than using
general movie titles, animals, or typical words. Participants can sit in a circle or a
classroom setup, as long as theyre all able to see the one acting out the word.
2. Place all participants pieces of paper into a small bowl/cup and shuffle.
3. Leader or first participant should start off by picking out a piece of paper from the
container and acting out whats written on it so the others can guess the emotion.
4. Take turns picking a slip of paper and then acting out the word written on it.
5. Continue the activity until everyone has gotten a chance to act out an emotion. The
winner is whoever guessed the most emotions correctly.

Leadership Considerations:
For someone with Down Syndrome or any type of developmental/intellectual disability,
it is important to consider their communication problems and difficulty relating to
people, objects, and events. This activity focuses on improving social, communication,
and behavioral skills.
Its highly likely a person diagnosed with autism lacks emotional reciprocity so this game
will be a challenge for them. Leaders can substitute the words written on the pieces of
paper for actual pictures showing the emotion. Or draw the emotion out rather than act
if the participant is too shy.
One way to make the game a little more interesting is to split the participants into two
teams. Therefore, they can work together to figure out how to act out the emotion or
figure out the competitors displayed emotion.
One way to increase the intensity of the game is to set a rule that they cannot use the
actual word or draw the emotion using a face (for example: sad or ). Instead, to
express the feeling they must draw out a aspect of a situation to show theyre
understanding of the emotion as well (for example: to express sadness, draw a woman
crying alone in a window, or a rainy day).