Family Tree of Emotion Code

Allow your children to discover their emotions while coding.

Why don't you try family tree to let your child explore his/her emotions? This activity help your child to understand different emotions and interrelated factors of his/her own emotions.Your child will be able to understand connectedness of his family members' emotions and his own emotions.

How to Play

You'll be sketching a tree and use sticky notes to write down names of each family member. Afterward, allow your child to analyze the code and add each binary codes based on his/her observations of father's, mother's, grandmother's, and grandfather's emotions. Tell your children: We're going to add emotions for each family member to analyze and identify. Additionally, you will be able to explore your emotion and know your emotions based on your ancestors. We'll do it like systems thinkers -- visually!

Step 1: Reflect + Discover

You and your child should sit down and talk through: What are the basic emotions each of us has?

One strategy: ask your child to close his/her eyes and imagine the days she/he is spending time with his/her friends.

Listen to your child express his/her emotions while spending time with his/her friends and explaining step by step verbally -- and you start to take some notes what he/she is telling.

Step 2: Types of emotions

It's a definition and coding moment, where you can have a back and forth conversations to learn different emotions.

Ask open-ended questions that allow them to articulate what anger, joy, anxiety, trust, kindness, etc. means to him/her -- what they know and don't know. You don't need to use these formal questions, but just ask a lot of 'what' and 'how' questions.

Ask them a question that triggers a picture from the past and present – “Do you remember the time you want to spend time with your friends” or “How did you feel when you were alone?"

Step 3: Coding time!

After clear understanding of emotion types, have your child code for each family member's emotions based on his/her experience and interaction. Make sure to scaffold your child if she/he has any misunderstanding while coding.

The coding for each emotion should represent each family member and the two levels (high and low) represents how strong and weak emotion type is.

Step 4: Time to Test it

Now it's time to start the experiment.

Ask your child that based on coding exercise, what kind of emotions he/she has? Are binary numbers really represent him/her?