“I’ve been working on recognizing emotions in DT with my non-verbal kid. What’s a good intermediate step to see if they are able to generalize this without walking them around the building with visuals and asking them about people’s faces?”
A great way to do this is to show your kiddo a short video clip. Pixar clips work great. I use Pixar shorts for this. They are about 3-5 minutes in length. Pixar clips are great because the characters faces and emotions are always over animated.
Let your kiddo watch the video once all the way through, then watch it again pausing on the emotion you want them to identify. Present them with their visuals and ask them to identify how the character is feeling. As the kiddo gets good at recognizing the emotions that are overdramatized/drawn, move onto clips with live actors.
*This lesson works well with the Social Detective lessons from Michelle Garcia Winner and her Social Thinking Series*