World Emoji Day is July 17- how fun! I mean, who doesn’t love an emoji? They have a way of adding a little something extra-extra and even help to improve conversation by adding an expressive touch to plain text. Emojis took on a whole new level at our house this year as Harper completed a year of virtual Kindergarten. It didn’t take long for her and the rest of her classmates to find the keyboard of fun little “stickers” on their iPads! Soon, the class chat screen was full of long-lined emoji messages as the Kindergarteners figured out their own way to communicate among themselves.
Emojis have become an integral part of communication via social media and beyond. Originally created with the goals of making communication quicker, easier, and to facilitate the ability to communicate emotional sentiment beyond plain text, emojis have now evolved into a collection of over 3000 characters spanning 8 categories: smileys & people, animals & nature, food & drink, activity, travel & places, objects, symbols, and flags. In fact, emojis have become so ingrained in our social communication and culture that over 900 million emojis without any other text are sent in Facebook Messenger every day.
Take a look at the ideas below for ways to have a little extra fun on July 17 for World Emoji Day with your kids: from snacks, to a free printable emoji game, to movie suggestions! If shopping is your idea of a celebration, check out Zulily’s Emoji Shop for all the heart eyes!
Here are some ways to celebrate World Emoji Day this year!
Dress Up
Start World Emoji Day with your kids by dressing in emoji themed clothing or a more subtle emoji inspired outfit. Wear a red dress to invoke the dancing woman emoji. Dress in all yellow and practice making your favorite emoji facial expressions. Get siblings together to match in all black outfits as a tribute to the “twinning” dancers emoji.
Eat your Emojis
Make the kids an emoji themed snack or let their favorite food emojis influence their meal choices today! Baking and decorating emoji cookies is a delicious way to celebrate!
Start with homemade or store bought sugar cookies. If you’re making your own, get creative with cookie cutters you probably already have on hand: basic circles for emoji faces, a ghost, hearts, and if you want a laugh, turn a Christmas tree cookie cutter into chocolate frosted poop emoji cookies.
Make or purchase various colors of frosting and decorating icing depending on which emojis you want to make. Decorate your cookies with your favorite emojis!
Other fun snacks and meals to make on World Emoji Day include cake pops or cupcakes decorated with emoji faces, a smiley charcuterie board, and a pizza with pepperoni heart eyes and a black olive smile.
Kids Crafts
For emoji craft inspiration, you can find easy step-by-step directions to make an emoji backpack, paper plate mask, and cozy emoji pillows here.
Emoji Games
Charades: Print small cards containing emojis and cut them up. Place them in a bowl. The first player chooses a card and tries to act out the emoji for the other players to guess. To keep score, whoever guesses right first gets a point! If you have enough people and a timer, you can have the player act out the emoji for his or her own team to guess until the time runs out.
Memory Match Game:
Print two sets of emojis on card stock. Cut out squares around each emoji. Lay them in several rows, emoji side down.
Each player takes a turn flipping over two cards, trying to find a match. If the flipped cards are not a match, they are turned back over and it is the next player’s turn.
If they are a match, the player keeps them and gets another turn. Whoever has the most cards at the end is the winner.
Print your own free game below!
Emoji Riddles: Challenge friends to this emoji puzzle game. Think of short phrases, movie titles, songs, etc. and translate or describe them using emojis. Print your riddles or start a (group) text. For example: ⭐️🐠= Starfish, 👩🏻📚+👹🌹 = Beauty and the Beast, 🌎🙂📆= World Emoji Day!
Pin the Heart Eyes: Draw a large yellow circle and a smile on a piece of paper or poster board. Draw the outline of two heart eyes. Use a red piece of paper to cut two red hearts and place double sided tape on the backs. Blindfold the player and spin them around. Point them in the direction of the yellow face. They will walk forward and place the heart eyes on the face, trying to get them in the right place. Whoever gets their eyes the closest is the winner!
Family Movie Night
End the day with a family movie night! Pop some popcorn, dig into your emoji inspired snacks, and turn on a movie. The Emoji Movie (PG), a computer-animated film, is a family friendly movie completely based on life as an emoji! It’s pretty cute and even tolerable for parents 😜(Rent on Amazon Prime)
However you decide to celebrate World Emoji Day on July 17, be sure to tag me on Instagram if you join in on the fun!
For more ideas, visit my complete Top 7 Ways to Celebrate World Emoji Day list published by Zulily!
What do you think?