The Emotion World Cup – Football Themed Emotion Tracking and Management Resource

The Emotion World Cup Football Themed Emotion Tracking and Management Resource

Help children explore emotions, recognise emotional patterns, and develop emotional awareness through a fun football-themed challenge.

The Emotion World Cup is an engaging emotional wellbeing resource that combines emotion tracking, emotional literacy, self-reflection, and friendly competition to help children and teenagers better understand their feelings.

Helping Children Make Sense of Their Emotions

Using the excitement and familiarity of a football tournament, this unique resource helps children and young people identify emotions, track emotional patterns, build emotional vocabulary, and reflect on their emotional experiences over time. As emotions compete for points throughout the tournament, children begin to notice which feelings appear most often, which emotional groups they spend the most time in, and how confident they feel recognising and managing different emotions.

By turning emotional learning into a game, children become more engaged, more reflective, and more willing to talk about their feelings.

What Is The Emotion World Cup?

The Emotion World Cup is a printable emotional wellbeing resource designed for educators, therapists, counsellors, pastoral teams, youth workers, and parents.

Children track their emotions over a chosen period of time, whether that's a week, a month, throughout a football tournament, or any timeframe that works for them. Each emotion earns points throughout the competition, with the highest-scoring emotions progressing to the final.

Along the way, children are introduced to eight different Emotion Groups, helping them understand that emotions often share common characteristics and serve similar purposes. This encourages children to think beyond individual emotions and begin recognising wider emotional patterns in their lives.

At the end of the tournament, the qualifying emotions compete head-to-head on the Final Board, where children reflect on their experiences, emotional understanding, and emotional regulation skills before crowning their Emotion World Cup Champion.

Why Emotional Tracking Matters

Emotions are constantly providing information about our experiences, needs, and wellbeing. However, many children move from one feeling to the next without taking time to notice, understand, or reflect on them.

The Emotion World Cup creates regular opportunities for emotional check-ins and helps children:

• Notice how they are feeling each day.
• Recognise emotional patterns over time.
• Understand the purpose and message behind different emotions.
• Build emotional vocabulary and confidence.
• Develop self-awareness and emotional insight.
• Reflect on how they respond to and manage emotions.
• Identify emotional strengths and areas for growth.

Rather than labelling emotions as "good" or "bad", children learn that every emotion has a purpose and something valuable to teach us.

What's Included?

• This comprehensive resource includes:
• Emotion Tracker Boards
• Emotion Flashcards
• Emotion Groups Mat
• Final Championship Board
• Winner's Mat
• Reflection Activities
• Emotional Literacy Framework
• Comprehensive How-To Guide

Everything has been designed to be simple to use while providing meaningful opportunities for emotional learning and reflection.

Understanding The Emotion Groups

One of the unique features of this resource is the Emotion Groups framework.

Rather than viewing emotions as isolated feelings, children learn that emotions can be organised into emotional families. These groups help children recognise similarities between emotions and understand the messages they may be sending.

The groups include:

• Positive Emotions
• Connection Emotions
• Low Mood Emotions
• Anticipation Emotions
• Intense Emotions
• Discovery Emotions
• Social Emotions
• Protective Emotions

As children track emotions over time, they can also identify which emotional groups appear most frequently. This often provides valuable insights into their emotional experiences and can help guide future conversations, support strategies, and emotional wellbeing interventions.

Key Benefits

Builds Emotional Literacy: Children develop a richer emotional vocabulary and learn to identify a wider range of feelings with greater accuracy and confidence.

Encourages Self-Awareness: Regular emotional check-ins help children become more aware of their emotional experiences and the patterns that occur over time.

Supports Emotional Regulation: Through reflection and discussion, children begin to think about how they respond to emotions and what strategies help them manage different feelings.

Creates Meaningful Conversations: The football-themed format makes it easier to start conversations about emotions, particularly with children who may be reluctant to engage in traditional emotional wellbeing activities.

Provides Valuable Insights: The tracking process helps adults identify emotional patterns, monitor wellbeing, and gain a deeper understanding of a child's emotional world.

Increases Engagement: By transforming emotional learning into a football tournament, children remain motivated and invested throughout the process.

How To Use

Children begin by selecting a timeframe for their tournament. This could be a week, a month, throughout a football competition, or any period that suits their needs.

Each day, they identify the emotion that best matches how they feel and award that emotion a point. Over time, the points build up and emotional patterns begin to emerge.

Alongside individual emotions, children can also track which Emotion Groups appear most often. This helps them understand not only how they feel, but also the types of emotions they experience most frequently.

At the end of the tracking period, the two highest-scoring emotions progress to the Final Board. Children then answer a series of reflection questions designed to explore emotional recognition, understanding, and management before crowning their Emotion World Cup Champion.

The winning emotion can then be displayed on the Winner's Mat, photographed, added to a wellbeing display, or used as a starting point for further discussion and reflection.

The winning emotion is simply the emotion that scored the most goals throughout the tournament. This creates a valuable opportunity for reflection and discussion. Children are encouraged to think about whether their winning emotion was helpful or unhelpful, how it affected their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, and whether they would like to see it back on their team next month.

For example, a child may discover that Worried was their highest-scoring emotion. Rather than viewing this as a failure, it becomes an opportunity to explore what that emotion was trying to communicate, what support may have been needed, and what strategies could help in the future.

This helps children understand that all emotions have a purpose, but not all emotions need to take the lead. The goal is not to eliminate emotions, but to learn from them, understand them, and develop the skills to manage them effectively.

Perfect For

The Emotion World Cup is ideal for:

• Schools and classrooms
• PSHE lessons
• Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)
• Nurture groups
• Counselling and therapeutic work
• School pastoral teams
• Emotional literacy interventions
• Youth work settings
• Alternative provision
• Family wellbeing activities
• One-to-one support sessions
• Small group work

The flexible format allows the resource to be adapted to suit a wide range of ages, abilities, and settings.

Why Professionals Love It

Professionals often tell us that children find it easier to talk about emotions when there is a structure, purpose, and element of play involved.

The Emotion World Cup provides exactly that.

By combining emotional literacy, emotional tracking, self-reflection, and football-themed gameplay, this resource helps transform emotional check-ins into meaningful learning experiences. It provides valuable insights for adults while helping children develop the emotional awareness and regulation skills they need to thrive.

The Emotion World Cup is more than an emotion tracker. It is a complete emotional literacy and wellbeing resource designed to help children understand their emotions, recognise emotional patterns, build self-awareness, and develop emotional regulation skills through a fun, engaging, football-themed challenge.

Whether you're supporting one child or an entire class, this resource provides an enjoyable and meaningful way to explore emotions and start important conversations about mental health and wellbeing. Download now!