Winter Emotions Sorting Mats | Feelings SEL Identification | SLP SPED Counselor

These Winter Emotions Sorting Mats offer a fun, hands-on way for students to identify and sort 7 different emotions across 7 seasonal characters spanning winter through early spring. A complete social-emotional learning (SEL) and emotion identification resource for January through March.

❄️ Perfect for:

• Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) targeting emotions vocabulary, social pragmatic language, and Wh- Question goals
• School Counselors building social-emotional learning (SEL) lessons
• Special Education teachers building emotion identification IEP goals
• Autism classrooms working on emotion recognition, self-awareness, and self-regulation
• Occupational Therapists working on emotional regulation and self-regulation
• ABA therapists running discrete trial emotion identification programs
• Social Workers and Mental Health Counselors
• Early Childhood, Pre-K, Kindergarten, and 1st Grade teachers building SEL foundations
• ELL/ESL teachers building English emotions vocabulary
• Homeschool families with young learners

⛄ What's Included — 7 Sorting Mats × 7 Emotions:

7 Seasonal Characters:

• Penguin
• Polar Bear
• Snowman
• Yeti
• Heart (Valentine's)
• Groundhog (Groundhog Day)
• Leprechaun (St. Patrick's Day)

7 Emotions to Sort:

• Happy
• Sad
• Silly
• Surprised
• Angry
• Worried
• Proud

🎯 Skills Targeted:

Emotion identification and labeling, basic emotions (happy, sad, angry) AND complex emotions (worried, proud, silly), social-emotional learning (SEL) foundations, self-awareness, emotion recognition in self and others, sorting and classification, expressive and receptive language, winter and early spring vocabulary, following directions, fine motor skills, and independent work skills.

How to Use:

In a small group, center, or independent workstation, students sort emotion picture cards onto the matching character mat. To increase difficulty, give students more mats and emotions to sort at once. To decrease difficulty, start with 2 mats and basic emotions (happy/sad), gradually adding more complex emotions and characters.

🐧 Ways to Use:

• Social-emotional learning (SEL) lessons
• Winter, Valentine's, Groundhog Day, and St. Patrick's Day thematic units
• Speech therapy emotions vocabulary sessions
• School counseling individual and group sessions
• Morning meetings and circle time discussions
• Emotions IEP goal data collection
• Independent work systems (TEACCH)
• ABA discrete trial emotion identification
• Self-regulation and calm-down corner support
• ESL/ELL English emotions vocabulary lessons

If your students enjoy these activities, there are many more sorting activities in my collection, you can find some of them at the links below:

More Hands-On Sorting Activities

Even More Sorting Activities

For more hands-on winter or emotions themed activities, please see the following links:

Hands-On Winter Activities

My Emotions Themed Activties