Being able to understand - or at least consider - someone else's perspective is an important skill for a variety of things. It can help with communication skills, empathy, social skills, comprehension, social inferencing...just to name a few.
Perspective taking is a complex social skill. A skill that requires quite a bit of practice to get good at. And honestly, it's a skill that many adults still need practice with.
But thankfully, these perspective taking activities, games, and printables should help.
This list of activities and games was last updated on March 18, 2024. New free resources were added and dead/broken links were removed.
Try these Perspective Taking Activities & Games with Your Kids
Here are some fun activities, games, and printables to help teach your kids and teens about others' perspectives. Please note that some require a Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) account, but don't worry, it's free to register.
You'll find that these activity ideas are great for group social skills work. Some could certainly even be adapted for use in social skills online groups.
1. Super Simple Perspective Taking Activity - All you need for this activity is two chairs. Or you could just sit on the floor. That works too.
2. Free Social Skills Lessons for Perspective Taking from Pathway 2 Success on TPT - This printable social skills packet includes two activities, an educator guide, and a lesson plan.
3. Free Perspective Taking Social Scenarios for Middle & High School from Misty's Speech World on TPT - This set of 9 task cards have different social scenario activities for kids to practice with. Kids read the task card. Then they try to identify the different perspectives of the characters involved.
4. Slam Dunk Perspective Taking Activity from Speech2u on TPT - Teach this important life skill with this basketball themed game. In it, kids practice identifying emotions and considering others' perspectives.
5. Find the Airplane Perspective Taking Activity with Free Printable from Centervention - This activity looks great. I do think many kids might find this activity challenging though.
6. Using Animations to Teach Perspective Taking Skills (Free Printable Included!) from Play Attune - Want something a bit more fun and interesting to teach this difficult social skill? Try using these short animated videos! Kids can fill in the accompanying printable after watching the short videos.
7. Free Comparing Perspectives Graphic Organizer from Literacy in Focus - Graphic organizers are so helpful for hyperlexic and autistic kids. In fact, they're one of our favorite tools! This freebie can be used to analyze and think about a variety of common social scenarios. And I love that there's both a printable and digital version included too!
8. What are They Thinking? Perspective Taking Freebie for Teens from Miss D's Autism Homeroom on Teachers Pay Teachers - This activity comes with task cards where you have to fill in the speech or thought bubble.
9. Free Perspective Taking Task Cards & Empathy Activity from Teacher Resource Cabin on TPT - This set includes 40 scenarios and social themes to practice perspective taking. As an added bonus, you can edit these task cards. That means you can customize them to be more relatable to your child.
10. Free Social Inferencing with Real Photos to Work on Perspective Taking from The Dabbling Speechie on TPT - This activity includes written scripts that are perfect for hyperlexic learners and uses real photos, which I'm always a big fan of!
11. Social Inferencing & Perspective Taking Boom Cards Sample from Mau SLP on TPT - Prefer Boom Cards for working on these skills? Try this free sample.
12. Social Inference & Perspective Taking Real Picture Scenarios Boom Cards Sample from Mau SLP on TPT - Another set of Boom Cards. This one includes the option of offering choices for answers or leaving it more open ended by not offering choices.
13. Making Inferences & Taking Perspective Visual Activities Set #1 from Jordan OT on TPT - This set of task cards includes 15 images with four questions per activity so there should be quite a bit here to keep kids busy.
14. What are They Saying? Perspective Taking Activity Sample from We Teach Speech on TPT - Here's a set of task cards that uses real photos with speech bubbles where you have to guess what the people might be saying.
15. Free Sample Christmas Perspective Taking Boom Cards from Mau SLP on TPT - Another set of Boom Cards, but this time with a Christmas theme! It includes the option to offer choices or not offer choices for each Boom Card.
16. Perspective Taking Glasses Worksheet from Educating Hearts on TPT - This simple activity looks like it involves some drawing.
Need More Help Teaching Perspective Taking Skills? Try this Social Story!
Sometimes it's helpful to do some more indepth teaching of this social thinking skill first. That's where this social story about perspective taking comes in. It's a great tool for explaining and understanding perspective taking to your child. It also explains what perspective taking is and gives kids simple questions they can ask to better understand someone else's perspective.
Get your copy of the Perspective Taking Social Story now!
You'll definitely want to read through this social story with your child a few times first. Then you can dive in and try one of these awesome perspective taking activities and games with your kids.
