Empathy is the ability to put yourself in the place of the other ; It allows us to connect with your emotions and your experiences, and understand why you feel in a certain way. In children, empathy allows them to generate lasting bonds, make friends, enhance their emotional intelligence …
This empathy in them can be fostered in different ways; one of them, through the game. We have selected 15 activities and games to work with the little ones, especially from group activities. Take note!
Empathy is simply listening, retaining judgment, connecting emotionally, and communicating that incredibly healing message that you are not alone.
-Brene Brown-
1) Draw your partner
This activity, carried out in a group, consists of asking each child to write their name on a piece of paper. The person leading the activity will collect all the papers and assign a name to each participant, randomly.
Each one will have to draw the partner that has touched him, making a short description of his character, his good things, etc., to finally give the drawing to that partner.
2) The box of feelings
In this activity, it is proposed to make “the box of feelings”; The children should leave the discomforts that they have felt during the day, written on paper, in that box.
At the end of the day, each child will read a piece of paper at random and come up with a solution to that problem, or make a nice comment to encourage that person who wrote it.
3) The cobweb
This game is great for meeting new people. We need a ball of yarn and the group of children sit in a circle. The facilitator will begin, taking the ball up and saying a characteristic that defines him . For example, “My name is Sara and I like to sing.”
He will then take one end of the thread and pass the ball, randomly, to a partner, to do the same. At the end of all the presentations, a spider web will have formed between the children, symbolizing the union between them .
4) The mime of emotions
In this game, also in a group, each child must ask his partner to mime him. You will have to say a word related to an emotion in the ear , and the other child will have to represent it through gestures. A simple game useful for working on emotional and also bodily empathy.
5) Change of silhouettes
In this game, what we will do on a floor where you can draw (like the schoolyard
la, with areas suitable for this), we must distribute the group of children in pairs. Each pair will have some pieces of chalk.
One member lies down and the other, with the chalk, surrounds his body, marking the profile with precision. When finished, you will write the name of the profiled person.
Afterwards, the lying child gets up and the “cartoonist” takes his place, expressing how he feels in that silhouette. Finally, the children switch roles , and at the end of the game we ask each child how they felt.
6) put yourself in my shoes
Children should sit in a circle and remove their shoes . Each one will put their shoes on the partner on their right. The one who leads the game will ask each child a series of questions, and each one of them must answer as if they were the partner who left them their shoes.
A very symbolic and visual game, ideal to literally put yourself in someone else’s shoes.
7) The group song
The dynamic consists of the following: learning together a song that talks about emotions. Then they should all sing it together; you can include the variant that each one sings a piece of it.
8) A shared history
This game consists of creating a shared story . It can be done with the support of the dice to create stories, the game called Story Cubes , very useful dice that must be thrown; Through the figures that appear in them, a story is created.
For example, each participant must roll a die and add a fragment of the story. At the end of everything, they will have to put a title to it between all . If the story talks about emotions, better to work on empathy!
In addition, we can add that each child is a character in the story, and that they express how they would feel if they were another character.
Asmodee Story Cubes: Fantasy – All Versions Available, Multilanguage (ASMRSC28ML1)
9) Change of clothes
This game is ideal for working in the classroom . Four boys and girls should lead the class. They will put on their clothes and accessories (jackets, coats, scarves …). The rest will observe the clothes that each one is wearing.
Then the observing group should close their eyes; we will change the chosen children by putting clothes from one to another (exchanging clothes).
The group will open their eyes and have to say what clothes they changed and to whom. A simple game that allows you to work on mental flexibility and the ability to get out of your own focus, essential aspects to develop empathy.
10) throwing the ball
In this game to work on empathy, the children stand in a circle; they can be sitting on the floor or in a chair. The one who runs the game begins by throwing a ball at one of them.
Whoever catches it must explain something about himself ; something you like, something that worries you, a question you have, an experience …
And when he throws the ball, at random, the partner who receives it must answer him with an answer, a comment, a similar experience, a feedback on what has been explained … It is a fairly free game but it can be adapted.
11) Cine-forum
In this activity, the task will consist of watching a movie together and at the end, having a debate with more or less directed questions, related to how the children think certain characters have felt in certain scenes.
For example, “how would you have felt when the protagonist meets his mother after so long …?”
12) Expressive faces
For this game, which can be done individually , we can use different material, such as: a sheet with images of real faces, with emoticons …
The game can be done in various ways; For example, asking the child to imitate each face or emoticon (you can use the face and the body), to say the name of the emotion, to explain a situation that generated that emotion (for example, of joy, sadness, etc. ). We leave you an example of material that we can use here:
13) Sculpt a feeling
Knowing how the other feels is an important skill in developing empathy. In this game, you try to write the emotions on pieces of paper and put them in a box.
A volunteer will draw a first paper and make the first “statue”, based on that emotion. The other children will have to guess what emotion it is.
14) A story made of images
This activity is also carried out in a group; randomly, a series of images that tell a story will be distributed.
Each child will hide his drawing; The game will consist of the children being able to recreate the story in order , first listening to others to find out where their own image fits, within the story as a whole.
Thus, they must explain what their image contains and try to guess the order of the story, building it little by little together.
15) The musical career
In this game, the children must stand next to each other, as if it were a race. We will put on music . As the music plays, each child should think about whether something ever happened to him that he can relate to that music; if so, they will step forward.
The child will have the option of sharing that memory with others , and of explaining why the music evoked it. We can take advantage and ask others if they also felt this way at some point, in order to encourage their empathy.
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