Learning Social Skills with Fun Emoji Activities
With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, there is more focus on feelings and emotions than any other time of the year. Depending on the student’s age, there are activities, worksheets, and conversations centered around feelings, friendship, emotions, and love for those around us. Cards and candy are shared. Classmates, BFF’s, siblings, teachers, parents, boyfriends, and girlfriends all exchange small gifts to show their feelings towards one another. This is a great opportunity to teach social skills- a key component of the ECC (Expanded Core Curriculum) to those students with visual impairments/blindness.
Many
students with visual impairment or blindness may need help understanding emotions,
feelings, and facial expressions due to missed visual cues. Students of all
ages and abilities really enjoy emojis in this current technology era! Young
students use charts with emojis to express how they are feeling. Older middle
and high school aged students use emojis on cell phones and social media. Emojis are used to help express feelings and emotions as well as objects, symbols, and many other items! Did you know there are currently over 2,666 emojis in the Unicode Standard as of June 2017? (Source: https://emojipedia.org/faq/).
Here are a few
fun activities for students of all ages to enjoy! All materials were purchased
at Walmart.
(Photo description: materials including: large and small foam sheets, wiggly eyes, and black felt.
Matching Emojis
Great for
students with low vision as well as students who use magnifiers, CCTV’s and
other low vision technology. Could be adapted to be tactual if
needed.
Item(s) prepared/used: gift bag with emojis on both sides,
cut from the bag to use in various activities.
Photo description: Red gift bag with 9 different yellow emoji faces including: grinning face with big eyes, smiling face with smiling eyes, smiling face with eyeglasses, smiling face, smiling face with sunglasses, beaming face with smiling eyes, squinting face with tongue, slightly smiling face, and winking face.
Game/Activity Ideas: memory matching game, Go Fish, create
short scenarios and ask the student to choose which emojis a person in the story is
feeling.
Making Emojis
Great for
students with low vision and those who are totally blind. Items are tactual in nature
and can be adapted by the TVI to fit the needs of a student.
Item(s) prepared/used: yellow paper plates, black craft
felt, foam sheets (large and small), large wiggly eyes, Velcro. Pre-make blue tears,
pink tongue, glasses, and various mouths, eyes and eye brows in various shapes
as depicted in each emoji.
Game/Activity
Ideas:
*Learn basic
facial features/body parts
*Discuss
facial features of the emoji (tongue sticking out) and what that means when a
person does this. That some items (like hearts) are meant to be eyes but show
the feeling (love).
*Have the
student create emojis based on feelings/emotions discussed through various scenarios.
*Have to
student imitate the feeling/look of the emoji. Use a mirror (or magnified
mirror) when available for students with low vision.
Photo description: emoji grinning face with big eyes.
Photo description: Emoji laughing with tears of joy (LOL= laugh out loud)
Photo description: Emoji winking face with tongue.
Photo description: emoji with smiling face and heart eyes.
Have fun
with your students and leave a comment if you used this activity!
-Kristen
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