Social-emotional skills are crucial to develop in the early years. Check out some of our favorite social-emotional activities for preschool!

1. Ball Games

Ball games are a relatively simple way for younger children to build relationships. Cooperatively rolling a ball back and forth is a great way of initiating play and

turn-taking. For older children, they can play in a larger group and say each other’s names before rolling the ball, practicing initiating play verbally.

2. Roleplay

Roleplay is a great way for children to experiment with social behavior, rules and expectations. Children often enjoy acting out what they know, such as cooking and eating dinner together. Roleplay is a safe space for children to develop social skills, though to begin with they may need guiding through the narrative. After a while though children will begin to develop imaginative scenarios that allow them to work on their social-emotional skills through play.

 

3. Stories

 

Reading has a huge range of benefits, including social-emotional benefits.

 

Reading a story with emotional content, and discussing it with your child gives them the opportunity to develop empathy, as well as tools to use in their own experiences of emotions. You might ask; “Why did the character get angry? What makes you get angry?”

 

4. Puppets

 

Similar to stories and role play, using puppets to act out social situations and emotions is a good way to develop children’s recognition and understanding of emotions as well as explore ways for managing social scenarios and feelings.

5. Listening games

An important part of social-emotional development is the ability to recognize, understand and respond to appropriate boundaries and behavioural expectations.

Helping your child to listen carefully to instructions and change their behaviour in response to this will improve their social-emotional skills as well as listening, attention and focus.

Games like “Simon Says” and “Red light, Green light” allow children to practice listening carefully, following instructions and changing their behavior in line with expectations. Here are some more listening games to play.

6. Board games

Board games are an ideal way for children to experience turn-taking, as well as winning and losing and the emotions that are involved in both.

With so many educational games on the market for preschoolers, children can work on a whole host of skills through playing games. Encourage children to follow the rules, take turns, and keep play friendly even when they are frustrated.

 Here are some favorite stories and songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDUcyLtKC3M  

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