Sunday, August 24, 2014

Home-Designed Feelings Charts - Free Download!

In our recent move, I have unearthed various treasures, some of which had been out before but have now been discovered by little fingers who couldn't see them in the old house. One of these is this little gem from my husband's earlier years (I'm not sure how much earlier - probably as late as college, let's be honest):

That would be a giant fridge magnet featuring Garfield and his many moods - complete with a frame selector so the owner can indicate their own Garfield-esque emotions. Classy, I know.

And the kids have enjoyed it. Maybe a little too much. Because, of course, when you have one of something fun and more than one child, someone will always be unhappy. Thus, after a morning of bickering, I realized I had paper and I had magnets, so we would make everyone their own chart and create peace in our home once again. 

Of course, I had imagined drawing a happy face and a sad face and maybe a little sleepy face with zzz's on a piece of paper and calling it good - I might have even let them draw the faces, so I could be lazy they could practice their art skills. My kids have higher ambitions.

So, the older boy declared he would have Mario Party (aka, anything having to do with Super Mario Bros) - which led sister to demand My Little Pony. I told them I'd see what I could do, but I needed nap time to work on it, if they were willing to wait. Fortunately, they were more than happy to see what Mommy would come up with. So, they glitterized their magnet frames (made from a free magnet sheet that had once had ads for local businesses) and waited patiently (with the one caveat provided by my little opinionated ones that they each have "Smart" as an option on their list).

And then Mommy had a little too much fun searching the internet for just the right pictures (and took some creative license on the character of choice for Little Miss - so glad Super Princess Peach displays a lot of emotion). They were pretty happy with the results.

 (We keep Garfield up for littlest man who is too small to realize he's getting shafted by not having a personalized chart.)

The free magnets are maybe not so strong, but they're good enough. I also used glue dots to attach small magnet squares to the back of the charts so they are easily moved, if needed. I would have laminated them had the magnet frames been strong enough to hold through that kind of thickness.


And after I put in so much work, I decided to share with the world in case there are other Mommies, with maybe less ambition or free time, who have their own emotional little ones. And, maybe, if those Mommies don't want to glitterize free magnet sheets, they can use photo frames and dry erase markers (or dry erase colored pencils, or crayons - I'm pretty into dry erase media!)?


So, here are the .jpg images - feel free to download them (or click on them to open them larger and right click to "Save As") and insert them into a Word Document to re-size and print as needed! But, please note, I don't own the rights to any of these characters or their images (um, hello, if I did, we'd be rich!), so don't try to sell this in any format! Thanks! 


(I included "Lucky" on the original Mario because it was one the kids remembered from the Garfield, and I liked the picture, but I really wanted something more manly that portrayed something equivalent to the "Beautiful" for the girls - so here's a revision with "Brave" - in case you like that better!)




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