Social development activity

20 Evidence-Based Social Skills Activities and Games for Kids

Oct 14 2020

Positive Action Staff

•

SEL Articles

Activities and games for socialization are a great way for your child to learn how to behave around their peers, no matter if he is a toddler, preschooler or if he just started kindergarten. Games can teach skills like taking turns, managing emotions, and reading body language.

Use these evidence-based social skills activities to help your child build their social behaviors and learn how their actions affect others. With these games, they can become more independent and maintain healthy relationships throughout their lives.

1. Staring Contest

Many children have trouble maintaining eye contact in conversation. A staring contest can help kids make and keep eye contact in a way that allows them to focus on that task, rather than trying to communicate simultaneously.

If your child still feels uncomfortable, you can start smaller. Place a sticker on your forehead for them to look at and then build toward having a conversation.

2. Roll the Ball

It’s never too early to start building social skills, and a game of roll the ball suits children as young as toddlers. Kids take turns rolling a ball back and forth between them, laying the foundation for other social skills.

Kids learn to carry this skill into taking turns in conversation or when doing joint activities. They also learn self-control by aiming the ball toward their friend and rolling it hard enough to reach them yet with limited force.

3. Virtual Playtime

Sometimes, your child can’t have play dates in person, but they can still spend time together over video chat and other online spaces. Video chats help kids make eye contact by looking at their friend on the screen.

Learning to adapt to new situations becomes a valuable trait, whether with social distancing or in their future workplace. Coming up with new ways to spend time together increases problem-solving abilities, which adds to a set of vital social skills.

4. Emotion Charades

Emotion charades involves writing different emotions on strips of paper. Your child picks one out of a hat or bucket. Then, they must try to act out that emotion.

Emotion charades can help children learn to recognize emotions using facial and body cues. You can even adapt social skills activities like this to create a game similar to Pictionary, where children draw the emotion.

By depicting and acting out emotional expressions and reactions in social skills activities, children learn emotion management, which plays an important role in creating positive relationships and communicating feelings.

5. Expression Mimicking Games

When you play this game with your child, you're teaching social skills with expressions. Mimicking your expressions allows your child to understand what certain expressions mean and recognize them when others make them in real conversations.

When kids with social challenges learn to read facial expressions, they become more comfortable in situations involving them.

6. Topic Game

You can play several variations of the topic game, but the most common one involves choosing a topic and naming things that fit into that category using each letter of the alphabet. For example, if you choose animals as the topic, you might come up with:

• A: Aardvark
• B: Baboon
• C: Chicken

The topic game teaches kids to stick to one subject and follow directions until they complete the activity. It also helps them make connections and get creative with letters that have fewer options.

7. Step Into Conversation

Step Into Conversation is a card game made for children with autism. The game presents structured social skills activities, like starting a conversation and talking about specific subjects based on cards.

The game helps kids learn how to talk to others appropriately and carry a conversation with perspective and empathy. It teaches good manners and self-control by showing them how to politely enter a conversation, when to talk, and when to listen.

By using socialization games like this one, you give structure to conversations to develop the social skills necessary to handle different situations in their daily life.

8. Improvisational Stories

Many children tell stories even outside of intentional social skills activities. With improvisational stories, you add another challenge that requires them to collaborate and create a narrative without thinking about it beforehand.

For this activity, place cards with pictures or words face down. The child picks three of these cards, and they must include these objects or topics in the story they tell. The game ends when all the cards are gone, or the kids reach the end of their story.

You can use this activity as a multiplayer game where children take turns adding to the story and building on each other’s ideas, or one child can tell you their own story.

9. Name Game

With this simple game, kids roll or toss a ball to someone after they call out their name. Social skills activities like this one work well for helping even toddlers learn their peers’ names. It shows that they are attentive to others, and it’s a step toward getting to know other people.

10. Simon Says

Simon Says builds social skills for kids' self-control, listening, and impulse control as they copy their peers' movements and follow instructions. It also helps keep the attention on the game and rewards good behavior for those who follow the rules throughout the game.

11. Rhythm Games

You can incorporate rhythm games as a social skills activity both at home and in the classroom. These music-making games let your child be creative while following directions and recognizing patterns.

A 2010 study by Kirschner and Tomasello shows that joint music-making helps social behavior. In a game where children must “wake the frogs” with music, the researchers found that kids who followed the rules by making music were more likely to help others who tried waking the frogs with non-musical means.

12. Playing with Characters

These social skills activities involve tapping into your child’s natural tendency to play. Using stuffed animals or dolls, you can interact with your child through the toys.

Having conversations through toys teaches kids to recognize behaviors and communicate their feelings. They practice their social skills through the toys in an imaginary, low-risk environment, without worrying about the toys’ hurt feelings.

13. Play Pretend

Kids will typically create a scenario in which they pretend to be someone or something else. For example, they might play house and take on the roles of parents, become a doctor, veterinarian, teacher, or cashier. Each of these situations allows them to explore different social skills activities.

As they pretend to parent another child, for instance, they must learn to recognize and respond to emotions, deescalate situations, and adapt to new situations.

14. Token Stack

You can adapt token stack from board games like checkers to create social skills activities that teach children how to have a considerate conversation. Every time the child speaks and responds appropriately, they add another token to their stack.

They face the challenge of trying to stack their tokens as high as possible while taking turns speaking. This activity makes them focus on having a calm conversation and giving thoughtful responses to questions and statements.

15. Decision-Making Games

Social skills activities like decision-making games come in many forms. By using strategy games or activities as simple as sorting and matching, your child learns persistence, thoughtfulness, and cooperation with others.

These games help kids with indecision, as they ask the child to make a choice, even if it’s not right the first time. It demonstrates low-risk consequences and encourages them to try again if they make a mistake.

16. Building Game

When children work together to build something, like a tower using blocks, they must communicate, take turns, and understand each other to bring their creation to life.

Kids will work together to come up with a method to build their item. When they apply it, they learn to try again if the creation falls and celebrate each other’s unique abilities when they finish the project successfully.

17. Community Gardening

Community gardening works differently than other social skills activities in that it teaches children to nurture a living thing.

Gardening with others increases social competence by having your child take care of something and learn responsibility, as they cannot neglect their plants. This activity also gets kids outdoor and can help calm them.

18. Team Sports

Children can participate in team sports through their school, on a recreational team, or even play with friends in their backyard. Team sports show kids how to work together toward a common goal and keep their focus on the game.

They also learn to recognize emotions, like when someone gets hurt or scores a goal, and react appropriately when they win or lose.

19. Productive Debate

A productive debate works well for older kids to learn how to manage emotions and work on positive expression, even in challenging situations. They learn how to have difficult conversations calmly, without turning them into an argument or trying to insult the other person.

People who can debate and listen to their opponent develop more of the skills needed to become leaders in the classroom and workplace.

20. Scavenger Hunts

During scavenger hunts, children work together to find objects or get a prize at the end of the activity. By working toward their goal, they learn teamwork, organization, and positive decision-making. They can choose to split up, move as a group, and collaborate to reach the end of the game.

They also get rewarded for cooperating. These activities help them with creative problem-solving abilities by making up clues for other players to solve.

What’s Next?

Using evidence-based social skills activities and games helps your child build social skills while doing something they enjoy. You can adapt any of these activities to something that engages your child and allows them to get creative with their socialization.

However, activities and games can only go so far. The Positive Action social skills curriculum is designed to work in tandem with activities like these and more to help your child identify their self-concept and shift this introspection to their social interactions. We feel social skills start within.

Explore our sample lessons for even more ways to encourage your child’s social-emotional learning, or contact us to find out how our program can improve your child’s social skills and have fun doing it today!

13 Evidence-Based Ways to Teach Social Skills in 2021

Oct 19 2020

Positive Action Staff

•

SEL Articles

Many students struggle to learn important social skills, like interacting positively with others and starting conversations. The time spent on lecturing in schools means that kids don't always have the time to use these skills in the classroom.

A lack of social skills can contribute to poor academic performance, causing problem behaviors in class and dropping grades. We’ll show you how to teach social skills just as you teach math, science, and writing using evidence-based SEL techniques in your classroom.

1. Work with Peer Mentors

Kids develop similar social skills to those around them as they observe others’ actions and behaviors. Pairing students with peer mentors of the same age makes learning social skills feel less like a lesson.

You can pair students of the same age and go over which social skill you want to work on that day so that the peer mentor can effectively guide their students toward developing the desired skills.

2. Adopt a Research-Based Program

A research-based program like Positive Action creates a unique curriculum suited to specific grades that helps with teaching social skills in the classroom.

Positive Action focuses on social skills instruction and overall personal development through six units. These lessons don’t take much time out of your school day, but they have a significant impact on kids, teachers, and parents.

The Positive Action program promotes a social emotional learning curriculum that encourages responsible decision-making, self-management skills, social behaviors, and following directions. It is designed to guide kids through social encounters and encourages them to make their own decisions, become independent, and improve their overall well-being.

Studies show its effectiveness in schools, citing that Positive Action has helped students raise their grades, interact positively with peers, and improve overall socialization skills.

3. Model Social Skills with Videos

Video modeling demonstrates social skills and allows students to observe an action before putting it into practice for themselves.

Videos are one of the most effective strategies for teaching social skills in class. You can use different kinds of video modeling, including:

• Basic: Students watch a video of people performing certain social behaviors.
• Point-of-view modeling: The video plays from the point of view of the learner.
• Prompting: The video demonstrates an action and then offers a prompt for an activity.
• Self-modeling: Someone records the student doing a social activity so that they can watch themselves.

They and other students then point out what the student did well and how they can improve.

4. Use Film and Video Clips

Apart from video modeling, you can have students give feedback about characters in video clips. Ask them to describe what the character did wrong in a specific situation first. For example:

• Were they talking too close to someone and invading personal space?
• Did they not make eye contact?
• Were they not listening?

When you teach social skills, it’s important for students to recognize problem behaviors in others and themselves. Using video clips will boost their awareness of these behaviors.

5. Have Students Create Videos

Try having students create their own videos while they practice social skills. You can use this activity for homework assignments so that kids can use their skills outside the classroom.

Creating videos lets children have fun with learning social skills. They also help each other learn by viewing their videos and offering feedback.

You might try choosing a single social skill to practice, like nonverbal communication. In this case, students create silent films. Ask the rest of the class to guess what happens in the films based on each person’s body language and nonverbal cues.

6. Imitate and Model Other Students

Much like with video modeling, kids often use imitation behaviors to learn new social skills. When you ask them to practice these techniques in the classroom, you can create situations where students model body language and other behaviors you want to encourage.

Use prompting while teaching social skills, so children get used to imitating and improving upon their skills. Kids may think they imitate well, but with instruction, find out where they can do better.

7. Construct Social Narratives

During a social narrative, you describe a situation to your students. For example, telling a short story about a student arguing with their teacher and getting in trouble presents a situation that does not demonstrate positive social skills.

With this exercise, children learn empathy when they consider how the person in the situation feels and how they would act differently. This skill allows them to explain why certain behaviors are or are not appropriate. The educator can also describe the best response after kids have thought about it themselves.

8. Create Lunch Groups

Break kids into small groups for lunch or activities. You can use topic boxes to prompt them to talk about specific subjects or use a particular skill.

Lunch groups can help students learn to talk about different subjects and relate to others by learning their interests. It also guides kids toward having appropriate conversations.

9. Form Structured Social Situations

In structured social situations, you teach a social skill to students before putting it into practice. You might have kids learn something on their own, in a one-on-one environment, before they go into a classroom to use their new socialization skills with others.

Structured social situations involve defining a behavior and the expectations that come with it first. For example, if a student has trouble standing too close to someone while talking, you might go over respecting personal space and have them practice it after.

10. Encourage Communication with Joint Action Routines

Joint action routines create predictable routines for skills that kids can repeat. You show them a skill and then have them repeat it to practice.

Joint action routines minimize distraction and confusion when you teach one skill at a time. They show students exactly what to do in social situations to form habits and become independent as they get comfortable with the behavior.

11. Create a Classroom Management Plan

A classroom management plan helps children develop a routine and meet expectations. It also helps with problem-solving, as kids learn that they must complete a certain task with or without help, as well as how to ask for help politely.

Children develop an understanding of a behavior through repeated situations. They learn how they can improve and behave in different classroom environments based on their assigned tasks.

12. Encourage Teamwork

Activities, such as cooperative games or decision-making tasks, particularly those that don’t just encourage but require teamwork for success, lead children to get to know one another, work together, and learn the fine intricacies of forging friendships and presenting well-reasoned debates to have their voices heard.

Avoid creating long-term teams to keep students continually interacting with new groups and practicing new social skills as different personalities collide!

13.

Social role-play activities allow students to use their new skills creatively. Give your class a scenario and ask them to come up with a short skit to act out in front of their peers.

You can make the scene specific to a single social skill, and other students will give feedback after the actors finish their demonstration. Kids come up with their own scripts, which allows them to think about the actions that do and don’t work.

Conclusion

When you use evidence-based methods for how to teach social skills, you help students learn new social techniques more quickly and effectively. Use a combination of these practices to determine how your students respond best and see which ones they enjoy.

Positive Action can help with SEL in any learning environment.

Contact us to schedule a webinar and talk about how our program can benefit your classroom.

Ministry of Social Development of the Kirov Region

Pogumirskaya A.M. - State budgetary preschool educational institution kindergarten No. 133 of a compensating type of the Vyborgsky district of St. Petersburg

- Kindergarten on the street. Rudneva d. 28, building. 2, Tel. 516-33-32> Group "Tickle">

SUGUMSKAYA Arina Maksimovna Teacher-defectologist Higher pedagogical education Plutular play, as a factor in the social development of preschool children with visual impairment . Preschool age is an important period in a child's development. It is during this period that the child acquires social experience, learns to communicate, enriches knowledge about the world around him, learns the rules and norms of behavior, that is, his social development takes place. Playing activity for preschool children is the leading one. The role-playing game is of particular importance for the social development of a preschooler. However, in conditions of impaired vision, the specifics of the development of social experience are noted, and visual impairment also leads to the features of the manifestation of a role-playing game, which affects the social development of a preschooler. The relevance of the choice of this topic is due to the insufficient development of this problem in typhlopedagogy. Thus, the purpose of the article is to identify the features of the social development of children with visual impairment and the rules for constructing targeted work on organizing role-playing games aimed at eliminating the problems caused by these features. To achieve the goal, it is necessary: ​​firstly, to reveal the concept of social development, secondly, to determine the basic concepts required to study the problem, thirdly, to identify the organization of role-playing games aimed at social development. Social development can be understood, on the one hand, as the process of assimilation of socio-cultural experience in the form of rules, norms, standards of action, ways of behavior and interaction of people in society, and on the other hand, the process of development of the essential "I" of the child, his individuality and uniqueness, a certain independence from society, but able to harmoniously and effectively adapt to a changing social environment. [5] A.M. Shchetinina [6], while studying the diagnostics of social development in preschool children, identified the indicators of a socially well-developed child. A socially successful child is a child who responds emotionally to the experiences of another. That is, empathy. He perceives and adequately understands the basic emotional states of people, such as anger, fear, sadness, joy, surprise, interest, and others. Detects the ability to decenter, in other words, can see the situation from the point of view of another. Emotionally well. Has a positive self-acceptance, self-attitude. Shows self-confidence, independent, active, initiative. He considers himself loved by his parents, accepted by them. Possesses the skills of self-control, self-regulation. Positively evaluates and accepts others. Accepted by a group - has a positive social status. Owns methods of socio-cultural behavior and communication. Sufficiently communicative (within the framework of individual characteristics). Has a fairly developed (medium-high level) social intelligence. [5] Since play is social in origin, it is very important for a child's social development. The significance of the role-playing game is manifested in all components of social development. Game is a form of activity in imaginary situations of which typical actions and interactions of people are displayed. For a child, it is a form of realization of activity and a sphere of life. The real and imaginary images, objects, toys displayed in the game contribute to the child's knowledge of the world around him and the development of emotions and speech, memory and thinking, accustom him to purposeful activity. [1 The role-playing game is one of the earliest types of child's play activities. Other types of games develop on its basis . The main feature of the role-playing game is the presence of an imaginary situation in it. An imaginary situation is made up of a plot and roles.[4] For persons with visual impairments, its use is even more important. This is due to the fact that visually impaired children cannot learn a lot by imitation, while a child with normal vision learns everything by imitation, learns the world by watching adults or surrounding children. At the same time, the role-playing game of children with visual impairment has a number of features . In children with impaired vision, there is often a lag in the development of play activity, and, consequently, the development of a role-playing game occurs later than in normally seeing children. A visual defect and secondary deviations leave their mark on the formation of the main prerequisites for gaming activity - objective activity, the ability to operate with representations in the internal plan, verbalization and the affective content of practical communication experience. Preschoolers with impaired vision linger longer on object games, on manipulations with objects. Many children refuse to participate in joint games due to poor motor training, low level of physical development, poor possession of objective actions and joint activity skills. In the structure of the plot-role-playing game, the plot, role and game action are distinguished. Visual impairment affects all components, most of all it is manifested in the lack of formation of game actions. This is due to the fact that the child does not see well the performance of actions by other people, he forms a small stock of ideas about practical actions. As a result, instead of acting practically, many children prefer to "pronounce" difficult and unfamiliar actions. [5] Due to the fact that children have difficulty in unfolding the game action, this limits the storyline of the game. The plot-role-playing game of a child with visual impairment is characterized by the poverty of the plot. Many authors write about this, D.M. Mallaev, Nikitina A.V., Plaksina L.I. and others. Thus, one of the reasons for the delay in social development is that their role-playing game is less developed than their normally seeing peers. Which, in turn, requires purposeful work to organize role-playing games. Purposeful work is built in three directions: firstly, enrichment of children's ideas about the world around them, secondly, the formation of game skills and, thirdly, the organization of interaction in the game. To enrich children's ideas about the world around you, you can tell children interesting information that will be useful to children in the game, for example, how an astronaut prepares for a flight, how animals are cared for in a zoo, what children do at school. You can also use such methods as observing the life of adults, the behavior of animals, consider illustrations of both a subject and plot nature, read fiction, play the plots of fairy tales. For the formation of gaming skills and abilities, you can use such methods as introducing children to a variety of games, changing the playing environment depending on age and individual characteristics, orienting children to the implementation of a game action and explaining the game meaning of a partner. To develop the interaction of children in the game, you can diagnose the interpersonal relationships of children. After that, conduct conversations and individual work with children who have difficulties in communication and behavior. In working with children with visual impairments, the most important task is to equip them with the necessary standards and stereotypes of communication, those elements of communication from which children will build their own communication in the future. [3] In order for the emotional development of the child to take place in the role-playing game, it is necessary that the role that the child plays is clear to him, so that the child understands how people who feel0223 find themselves in this situation. Thus, for the social development of older preschoolers, a role-playing game is one of the effective means, and its development depends on children's ideas about the world around them, the formation of children's playing skills, and the organization of interaction in the game. References: 1. Akatov L.I. Social rehabilitation of children with disabilities. Psychological foundations: Proc. allowance for students. higher educational institutions. - M .: Humanit. ed. center VLADOS, 2003. - 368 p. 2. Baryaeva LB, Zarin A. Teaching role-playing game to children with problems in intellectual development. - St. Petersburg: Russian State Pedagogical University named after A.I. Herzen; "SOYUZ", 2001. - 416 p. 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