National Rubber Ducky Day: Feelings Games

It's National Rubber Ducky Day

It's National Rubber Ducky Day on January 13th, but as a child therapist and early childhood mental health consultant, I may use these delightful yellow creatures on any given day of the week!

Playing with feelings is a common theme for most child therapists and counselors, but you can easily play along at home with the kids, too!

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Feelings Ducks

1. Using a Sharpie, draw feelings on the bottom of the rubber duckies. The more, the better! If you need help coming up with feelings to add, look RIGHT HERE for a bit of feelings inspiration!
2. Allow children to pick ducks, one at a time and read the feeling aloud. Then, tell about what might make someone feel that way and how they could cope with it.

Duck-Duck-Feelings

1. Provide each child in the group with a ducky, on which the bottom has a different feeling written in  a Sharpie.
2. Proceed and play a typical game of duck-duck-goose, only when someone is named the goose, they first stand up and read out their feeling. Everyone in the group makes a face that demonstrates that feeling. The person standing gets to tell about what might make somebody feel that way. The group gets to offer ways to manage and cope with that feeling.
3. Proceed on until everyone has a turn!

Want to read more about the Rubber Ducky's Rise to the Top? Go HERE for details!

If you like this simple idea, you're going to LOVE this: Dr. Lynne Kenney and I will be sharing tons of interventions to help teachers, clinicians and parents help kids learn self-regulation skills in just a few weeks! Go HERE to learn more about registering for the 12 hour online workshop! You can take it from anywhere in the world!

Need more games and activities that provide a comprehensive, therapeutic-strength approach to help kids understand and cope with feelings? Go HERE!

Until next time,

Wendy Young, LMSW, BCD, is  the founder of Kidlutions and co-author of BLOOM: 50 Things to Say, Think and Do with Anxious, Angry and Over-the-Top Kids. She is the creator of numerous workbooks and resources to help from the preschool through the teen years. Follow her on Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook! She'd love to see your smiling face there! Affiliate links may be used in this post. Please see our full disclaimer, located at the top of our page for more information.