Hi and Welcome back! In my previous post, I discussed the reasons of teaching children social skills. To re-cap, social skills are not a simple task for them to learn intuitively, it has a close relationship with academic performance, and most importantly, it can affect one’s mood and trigger anxiety problems.

So today, I would like to discuss this further with some ideas to help our children develop their social skills. With some of these suggested activities, I hope to help improve the child’s ability in playing co-operatively, turn taking, taking account of one another’s ideas, showing sensitivity to others’ needs and feelings and forming positive relationships with adults and other children.

I selected five activities from various categories: house chores, storytelling, photos, dance, and board games, in order to offer children various options for learning and also match to the individual needs, interest and strengths of children. Although they are using different ways and materials, these activities share the same core skills, in which the fundamental nature requires collaboration between players to accomplish a task.

On the surface, it appears we are giving the child plenty of opportunities for working in pairs and in groups through playing these games. But in fact, we are actually creating a need for them to use their social skills in the setting without them even knowing!

OK! Lets go! Here are the activities:

1. Cleaning toys

With some real cleaning materials, you can carry out your own “homemade” social skills activities with your children! Fill your containers with water, ask them to take out all their toys, explain to them that it is time for cleaning. You can try to support them as they work together, encouraging collaboration, like carry a pail of water together. This is a good time to practice working together on a real-life activity and one more plus point is that kids like water! I believe pre-schoolers will be especially fascinated by the cleaning work. Have a try!

 

2. Find a face

If you are an educator working closely with children, I hope this will be a fresh idea for you to help a child concentrate on other people. Get started by printing photos of children on a card and cut each photo in half from head to chin. Then, mix all the photos up and ask everyone to fit them together again. Alternatively, you can ask children to bring their photos when they were babies. Ask them to match the baby photo and the child. Throughout this game, every child needs to practice waiting and turn-taking skills while having fun finding the right person.

 

3. Tell us a story

There are many ways to tell a story. Here is one interesting way to start you off: gather the children to sit in a circle for the story. Prepare a drawstring bag filled with soft toys of a themed collection, for example, a pirate bag with treasure, golden cups, and jewel. You can take one of the toys out of the bag and start the story like this, “One day, Phoebe went out for a walk, and on the way she met…”, then pass the bag to the next player, who will continue telling the story. As the story will be connected by everyone, thus in this activity, a child has to learn taking account of one another’s ideas about how to carry on the game.

 

4. Follow the leader

Activities that involve dancing or movement can trigger laughter and joy, which increases energy and reduces tension! This is an especially positive factor to enhance learning social skills in this relaxed manner. During the activity, parents and child take turns following the moves led by each other, for example, jumping, crawling, etc. To make it more interesting, you can play the music and take turns to call a name. The person who is called will make a movement, then after that he can randomly call one person as the next player. With this game, they can learn that working cooperatively makes playing fun and therefore they will be motivated for more teamwork.

 

5. Max the cat

This is an example of cooperative board game. This type of game requires that players work together as a team to meet a specific challenge. Players have to share ideas and practice problem solving to obtain a common goal and win the game.

Through the game, children will learn to relate that cooperation is needed and is related to achieve goals and, it is enjoyable too! In this game, players work together to help a mouse, a bird, and a chipmunk get home safely before Max, the cat, catches them. This game provides ample opportunities for children to discuss their ideas and solve the problems together in order to win the game.

Conclusion:

Despite all the various suggestions of different activities, there should be one underlying fundamental principle. And that is to make learning fun! Generally, work or learning is often related to pain, while play is linked to pleasure. Play and work should complement, not oppose, each other during each major phase of growth (Elkind, 2007).

Therefore, embed the fruitful learning journey of social skills in a fun game and make both the process and goal enjoyable and rewarding. In this circumstance, while children are enjoying the game, they also unaware that they are actually practicing and grasping the social skills. And seeing your child enjoy will surely bring a smile to your face.

References:

Elkind, D. (2007). The power of play. Da Capo Lifelong Books.

Featherstone, S, & Featherstone D. (2013). 50 fantastic ideas for sharing and playing. London, Bloomsbury Publishing.

Schaefer, C.E., & Cangelosi, D. (2016). Essential play therapy techniques. New York, The Guilford Press.