Trading Faces is a fun, innovative card game that encourages students to recognize AND imitate the faces they see. Communicating emotions is a (mostly) non-verbal skill and this allows kids (typical and neurodiverse) to practice! As a speech-language pathologist working with preschool-5th grade students for 18 years, I am so excited to find a fun game that is published outside of the special-education world. Many of my students struggle to "read" the faces that they encounter (i.e. the faces of peers, teachers, family, etc). Finding a fun way to explicitly teach emotions and the resulting facial expressions is wonderful. Modeling and practice of social-emotional skills is evidence-based and just more fun!

Trading faces comes in a 7"x6" box that contains 39 playing cards, larger reference cards, and instructions. The box helps keep the cards organized through its molded cardboard insert (a nice bonus). I really like the reference card that is available during game play to help kids remember the facial expression "options". The idea of the game is to create matches through passing of cards. Kids have to give clues by modeling the facial expressions. In addition to practicing the expressions, kids have to remember to not "blurt" the answer, but instead practice self-control (yay!). There is also a memory game for 2-4 players- this may be better for younger kids. Trading Faces is a fun game I would recommend to families and professionals alike!

I like that it was a social emotional themed game. Your child will practice identifying emotions and then portraying that emotion for others to guess. I think it is so important to be able to identify your emotions and then be able to portray it. This game would be perfect during a social studies lesson on what we look like and feel like for different emotions.

Skills practiced were working together, identifying emotions, emotional intelligence, strategy, relationship-building, and following directions!

This game is helpful for introducing the awareness of different emotions. The game not only challenges comparing and contrasting, recognizing numbers and same/like cards and helps with dexterity (holding the cards), but it helps kids to recognize there are more than just simple emotions like sad and happy. It would be useful as a tool to start conversations about feelings, facial expression and the relationship to feelings inside. I believe this game would be therapeutic for families and counselors to help start a conversation about feelings and expressing them.

I love the format! Card games are great to take from classroom to classroom or on the road!