Naming Basic Emotions
Your child can name feelings — happy, sad, angry, scared, excited, surprised. They can spot those feelings in other people too, from faces and body language.
In curriculum terms
Name and recognise basic emotions — happy, sad, angry, scared, excited, and surprised — in themselves and in others by looking at facial expressions and body language
Ages are typical, not deadlines — follow your child’s pace. How to help at home →
How to tell they’ve got it
Tick these off as you see them — no test required.
🖨 Print this page to keep the checklist — it prints beautifully.
Try this together
If your child sees a friend crying at a birthday party, can they tell you what that friend might be feeling and name the emotion?
Where this sits on the map
Stuck here? Check the skills it builds on first. Confident? Here’s what it unlocks.
solid = must come firstdashed = helps
Curriculum alignment
Where this fits in the official school curriculum — our best automated guess, not yet checked by a person.
Show candidate curriculum codes · 1 ACARA · 3 VIC
Australian Curriculum v9 candidate
explain how and why emotional responses can vary and practise strategies to manage their emotions
Victorian Curriculum 2.0 codes & levels only
These are candidate alignments generated by semantic matching — machine-suggested and unreviewed (v0.1), not official or verified mappings. For official curriculum content see australiancurriculum.edu.au, curriculum.nsw.edu.au and f10.vcaa.vic.edu.au. Don’t rely on them for registration or compliance purposes.