Feelings in the Wild – Emotional Awareness Scavenger Hunt - Explore Emotions in Your Community this Mental Health Awareness Week

Feelings in the Wild invites children to step outside and explore the emotions they see in everyday spaces like schools, shops, parks, or playgrounds. By observing real-life facial expressions and body language, children begin to develop key emotional literacy skills — learning how to recognise and understand how others might be feeling. This hands-on activity encourages empathy, mindfulness, and meaningful reflection, helping children strengthen their ability to read social cues and connect with the world around them.

Benefits of This Resource

• Develops empathy and emotional intelligence.
• Encourages non-verbal communication awareness.
• Makes emotions more relatable by seeing them in context.
• Supports group discussion and observation skills.
• Helps children understand emotional diversity and unpredictability.
• Builds confidence in recognising and naming emotions.

How to Use This Resource

• Take the sheet on a local walk around your school, neighbourhood, or a nearby park. Ask children to quietly observe people they pass and take note of facial expressions or body language that might suggest how that person is feeling (e.g., happy, stressed, excited, tired).

• Visit a community space such as a library, supermarket, café, or leisure centre. Let children observe interactions (respectfully and without approaching people) and discuss what feelings they think they noticed and what clues helped them identify them.

• Use it as part of a school or classroom outing, such as a field trip or nature walk, where children can reflect on emotions in both people and even in animals or environmental moods (e.g., the calm of a quiet pond, the energy of a busy road).

• Create a discussion circle back in the classroom or at home. Ask children to share what they saw, what they felt themselves during the outing, and what might have caused those emotions in others (e.g., someone frowning while waiting in line might be impatient or tired).

• Incorporate drawing or writing reflection: Ask children to draw a face they saw and label it with an emotion, or write a short description of a person they observed and what emotion they think that person was experiencing.

• Explore emotional vocabulary: After the outing, build a word bank together of all the different emotions they observed or learned about. This helps expand their emotional language and understanding.

• Use it as a springboard for roleplay: Act out some of the expressions or situations the children observed, and ask the group to guess the emotion being shown. This can turn into a fun, team-building emotional charades game.

• Use photos if an outing isn’t possible: Provide photos or magazines and have children do a ‘Feelings in the Wild’ scavenger hunt indoors. They can circle or point out facial expressions, then discuss or write about them.

• Extend with a journaling activity: Invite children to write about a time they felt an emotion they observed in someone else and what helped them feel better.

This free downloadable Mental Health Awareness Week worksheet for children is a creative, real-world way to teach children about feelings while connecting with their surroundings, ideal for primary schools and professionals. It promotes understanding of human emotions through fun, mindful observation.