Here’s a cute way to talk your toddler through different facial expressions, as he or she learns the vocabulary and proper outlets for all our various emotions!

Using old plastic Easter eggs, draw mouths in several expressions on the bottom half of the eggs, and eyes and eyebrows on the top. I had one each for: happy, silly, sleepy, and angry.

We started out with the eggs in complete sets, and I helped Veronika identify each. “Angry” had turned down eyebrows with a frown, while “Silly” had winking eyes with a tongue sticking out, and “Sleepy’s” mouth was in a big O for a yawn.

I named each emotion for Veronika and she giggled at the silly ones and looked very serious for others (e.g. angry and sleep).

Next, we scrambled the eggs up! See if your toddler can mix and match to find the eyes and mouths that go together. This wasn’t always intuitive for Veronika, but she did certainly know what she wanted to find the most in our pile.

“Let’s find the angry face!” she said. As with a recent Panda crate, she’s drawn to the sad expressions, perhaps because these are the scariest for a toddler to sort through.

Needless to say, the eggs were also great fun to put together in mismatched combinations. And then of course she wanted to draw on them too. This activity made for good play and for an ever better tool in social emotional learning!