Social skill activities for elementary students

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!

Try These 5 Great Social Skills Activities for Students & Groups

Working as a school psychologist in the public school system for many years, I sometimes heard school counselors asking for advice about which social skills activities they should do with their students

Children in the group often had difficulty with skills such as:

listening
waiting their turn in conversation
staying on topic
sharing materials
understanding another person’s feelings
getting along with others
resolving conflict
appropriately expressing their own feelings

This article gives five suggestions for social skills activities for students and groups.

You may think these activities are more appropriate for elementary-age students but I think they can really be adapted for younger and older groups.

Activities can also be modified for a one-on-one situation such as parent/child or counselor/student.

What the research says about social skills instruction: Phillip C. Kendall, Professor of Psychology, reported the positive effects of using modeling and role playing, and teaching self-evaluation when teaching social skills.
Further research, such as Social Skills Training for Teaching Replacement Behaviors: Remediating Acquisition Deficits in At-Risk Students, confirms the benefits of intense social skills instruction.

Interactive Social Skills Books for Kids

5

Great Social Skills Activities for Students

1. Use engaging conversation, demonstration, role-play and/or visuals to teach students what social skills are and why we need to use them.

See an example of social skills below:

When first introducing kids to a social skills group it is a good idea to have them understand what social skills are and why they are important.

As a starting activity, write down different social skills (such as the ones from the list above) on individual slips of paper and put them in a bowl, hat, etc.

Have your students sit in a circle and pass around the slips of paper, taking turns pulling them out of the bowl one at a time.

When the student pulls the slip of paper from the bowl, ask them to say what the social skill means, have them give an example, and/or ask them to tell the rest of the group why that skill is important.

Give as much guidance and support as your students need to answer the questions. You may want to go first, to show the students how to do this activity.

Here is an example:

If a student picked “sharing materials” she could say “That means to let someone use something that you are using.

For example, if I am coloring with crayons I can let my friend borrow my crayons and color with me. Sharing is important because it shows others that you care about how they feel. Part of being a good friend is sharing.”

You could even have students act out the skills. So in this example, you can have one of your students pick materials to share with the other members of the group.

You can also let students create their own drawings of the skill you are talking about. To give you an idea of what I mean, below is a drawing of sharing:

Depending on the students’ skill and age level, frustration tolerance, and ability to sustain attention, you can do all of the suggestions I mentioned in this activity or just one.

You can break this into several lessons by only doing a few social skills at a time.

You also might want to add some skills that are not on the list such as showing empathy, staying on topic in conversation, and using manners.

Recommended Article: 15 Behavior Strategies for Children on the Autism Spectrum

2.

Use games and fun activities to practice sharing, turn-taking, listening, following directions, encouraging others, and being polite.

In the video below, the therapist uses bubbles as the prop. Other objects can be used to tailor this activity to students of different ages.

Imagine implementing this same lesson but using activities such as shooting a basketball in a net, playing with a remote control car, doing an activity on the computer, etc.

Recommended Article: 8 Fun Activities to Practice Social Skills with Your Child

3. Use conversation starters to create a dialogue between students or between counselor and student.

Then the youth is supposed to ask another person a question related to the topic they pick, and the other person is to ask a related question back.

This activity allows students to practice listening, taking turns in conversation, staying on topic, and expressing interest in another person’s thoughts, ideas, and/or life. See examples in the video below.

The counselor in the video below encourages the students to pick a topic from a slip of paper in a cup (e.g., friendship, fears, favorite activities, etc..)

4. Teach what is means to be a friend.

This next video gives you great ideas for how to talk to children about what it means to be a friend.

After you show the video, have your students:

tell you what they learned about being a friend
draw a picture that shows someone being a friend to another person
and/or practice one of the skills in the video

For example, this video mentions being a good listener and sharing as two of the things good friends do, so as part of the lesson have your students practice listening to each other and/or sharing items.

Talk to your students about what it means to be an active listener (e.g., looking in the direction of the person who is talking, waiting your turn to speak, responding to what the person said, trying to understand how the other person might be feeling, etc.).

The “What it means to be a friend” lesson could be a great segue into the lessons above which hone in on sharing skills and conversation skills.

Related Article: How to End Bullying Part 1: 19 Tips for Parents and Teachers

5. Practice complimenting each other.

Speaking of being a good friend, complimenting others (a great friendship skill) is another nice activity to do with your group.

Set the expectations from the beginning that only kind words and respect for each other is allowed in the group.

For this activity, you could go around in a circle and have each student say something nice about someone else in the group.

To make sure everyone gets a turn to be complimented, put people’s names on slips of paper in the bowl and have them pass it around taking turns pulling out names.

This activity will get easier as the students get to know each other better.

If the students just met and are not sure what to say about each other, allow them to say something nice about a family member or friend outside of the group.

As the group gets to know each other, the compliments should be about the group members.

Side Note: To teach self-evaluation, discuss how you and your student(s)/client(s) did during each activity. Give specific feedback about what went well and discuss areas that need improvement.

Let your clients share their own thoughts and perceptions about how they did during the activity. Encourage your clients to think about their own behavior when they are involved in similar real-life scenarios.

Education and Behavior – Keeping Us on the Same Page for Kids!

Social-emotional skills in school. Part 1.

As part of the project “University Environment for Teachers” of the Moscow City Department of Education, a program of several lectures was presented at the HSE Institute of Education, the participants of which were members of the Educational Spaces Design Studio. This article will focus on lecture “Forms of work in the classroom that contribute to the development of social and emotional skills of students” , author — Tatyana Kanonir , Associate Professor, PhD, co-director of the master's program “Measurements in Psychology and Education”.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the importance of developing social-emotional skills. The educational standards of basic and primary schools in Russia require the formation of students, along with subject educational results, meta-subject and personal educational results. It is under personal educational results that social-emotional skills are hidden.

Social Emotional Skills (SES) are skills that enable people to recognize and manage their emotions, successfully manage conflicts, understand and empathize with others, establish and maintain positive relationships, follow ethics, contribute constructively to their reference communities, set and achieve goals.

Different terms are used to refer to these “non-cognitive” skills: Soft Skills or “soft skills”, skills of the XXI century, emotional intelligence ... All of these concepts differ from each other in breadth of coverage and context of use, but have similar features: conceptual independence on cognition, total value for social adaptation, relative stability over time, potential change as a result of exposure , situational manifestation.

In this article we will focus on 2 social-emotional skills

Achieving goals : working towards achieving short- and long-term goals, including in changing conditions:
- stability (ability to maintain stable work for a significant time),
- self-control (the ability to control one's state in the process of performing a task),
- striving for a goal (awareness of the need to achieve the goal - independent or set by the teacher).

Collaboration with other people

sociability (ability to establish and maintain social contacts),

respect (tact and respect for peers and adults, including those from other cultures),

caring (disinterested assistance to the interaction partner).

Exercises to help teachers develop these social-emotional skills in students

1. Formation of the skill of achieving goals

Exercise : mutual assistance in achieving individual goals (conducted in small groups)

The teacher begins the lesson by telling the children about the difficulties people often face in achieving their own goals and suggests the most general strategies for overcoming these obstacles, writing the main points on the board. For example, it could be a list like this:

frustration (depending on the audience, a more understandable term may be used, such as depression) that the goal is too difficult. Possible strategies: relaxation, distraction, break from work.

boredom . Possible strategies: set a shorter-term goal, give yourself a reward (such as a break or ice cream). too lazy to do the task. Possible strategies are: assign yourself a reward, think about how you will feel when you complete the task, or that if you do not study, you will let the whole group down.

anxiety due to fear of failure . Possible strategies: remember situations in which everything worked out, relaxation techniques.

Then the teacher formulates in writing an individual educational (or near-academic) goal for each of the children (it is better to do this work in advance) and divides them into groups.

Children sit in a circle, each voices his goal and names the possible obstacles to achieving it. The rest of the group suggests possible solutions based on the information on the board or their own experience, and also try to suggest one action that they personally could help another child (for example, “I can call you on Friday and remind you that in you have to do the weekend…”, “I can call and find out how you are doing…”, “I can explain to you the material that you don’t understand…”, etc. ).

In the next week, students discuss in groups their progress towards their goals, how they felt when they were helped by classmates, what kind of help was most useful.

Expected results : children learn to anticipate barriers to achieving a goal and think in advance about possible options for overcoming them, children learn to help others achieve their goals, ask for help and accept it.

2. Learning how to work with others

Exercise : learning together

projects - for example, to study material about a country, continent, scientist, physical phenomenon, etc.,
each student is instructed to work through a certain part of the material, and then tell all the other members of the group about their findings,

then the group should prepare a joint presentation for the rest of the class,

at the end of the work it is necessary to discuss - what has been done and what has not been done? What turned out to be difficult in doing joint work, what can be done differently next time (when discussing, it is important not to indicate value judgments).

This exercise can have many variations, for example, “brain rings”, “debates” of representatives of different historical eras, etc.

According to the head of Educational Spaces Design Studio Rai Ivanovskaya, the task of forming and developing SES among students can definitely be solved with the help of designing the school space: forgot about the goals set (by the teacher or by themselves) - you can make a special stand in the class, on which they could write their goals, indicate the planned deadlines for achievement, indicate the expected obstacles and how they eventually coped with them. That is, this information is constantly “in sight” (the guys will not forget), and is also a demonstration of their success. In the event that someone does not cope with the task on their own, this is also visible and the teacher can “hint” to the students that their help and support is required (and this is already a manifestation of caring - that is, the skill of working together).

The stand itself must be visually attractive in design (with motivating phrases, for example), made of modern materials (marker film, cork, etc.) - so that children would be “pleasant” and interested in interacting with it.

Educational space design studio: we turn boring school interiors into bright and beautiful ones! View our work in the PORTFOLIO section.

By the way
Many currently existing SES assessment tools have disadvantages: they are based on purely local experience, data on the psychometric quality of methods are not published, there are practically no references to international experience, experience is often designed for individual assessment and is not scaled, and the result of assessment depends on the skills of the teacher and his attitude towards a particular student. However, if we do not have SES assessment tools, then we cannot draw conclusions about their development, can we?

The HSE Education Quality Monitoring Center, together with the Sberbank Charitable Foundation “Investment in the Future”, conducted a large-scale study of social and emotional skills in primary and secondary schools, based on an international research framework, associated with the Federal State Educational Standards for Primary and Basic Education, which resulted in developed monitoring evaluation tools.

It is important that the school as a whole (that is, different teachers) have a unified system of work on the socio-emotional development of children, as well as coordinated work within the teaching team, which is organized systematically and purposefully.

Target audience of SES development methods:

whole class or whole school,

risk group or children with a specific problem area (e.g. very shy),

individual students experiencing severe stress, having situational problems or going through a period of crisis (for example, in the course of adapting to a new school team when moving from one school to another).

When reprinting a link to the website of the Educational Spaces Design Studio (www.design4school.ru) is required.

Soft skills or social skills for a student: 85% of success in life

Harvard and Stanford believe that a student's academic knowledge is only 15% of success in his further education, in building a career and in life.

Russian schools actively download knowledge into the heads of our children, but do not teach them social skills, the so-called soft skills - leadership, teamwork, organizational skills, etc. Namely, they allow you to apply the acquired knowledge and achieve your goals: a prestigious university, a successful career, a happy family and true friendship.

A study of Fortune 500 CEOs found that long-term and sustainable job success is 75% social skills and only 25% academic.

Therefore, European education has long included the training of soft skills, without which it is difficult to succeed in the modern world. Many of these traits are innate and inherent in every child, but they need to be cultivated and developed. Here are some critical social skills that will help any student reach their goals in life.

TEAM WORK

The ability to listen, the ability to see a common goal and find points of contact between a common idea and personal ambitions. Willingness to help others and support in a difficult situation, the ability to convince and find a compromise.

Check if your child can:

do things with other children?

help someone solve their study question?

to make sure that not only he, but his entire team achieves the goal?

How it is taught in a foreign school:

team events: games, performance, volunteer programs;

joint academic projects, when the project can be defended only by the whole team;

competitions between "Houses" for students studying on a full board basis.

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LEADERSHIP

To be a leader means to be a person whom everyone else recognizes as having the right to make responsible decisions for the entire team.

Check if your child can:

to become a leader for other children: inspire and lead them?

understand and feel other people?

to set other children tasks corresponding to their abilities and character and to achieve their fulfillment?

How it is taught in a foreign school:

Supervision of junior schoolchildren and beginners by high school students;

Numerous clubs and hobby classes are sure to resonate in the soul of any student, and he will take the initiative in the area that interests him and gather his team of like-minded people.

We are looking for leaders, but not from the category of "president of the chess club", but from those who, faced with a problem, can at the right time take the lead of the team and lead it to the goal

- Laszlo Bock, Vice President of Recruitment, Google

CREATIVITY

A creative person is able to find non-standard, completely new solutions in familiar situations, he is able to invent and implement new ideas.

Check if your child can:

Suggest an idea for a gala evening, fashion design or pop star poster?

tell your friends the story he made up?

come up with an idea for a new computer game or mobile application?

How it is taught in a foreign school:

When solving a problem, the student will be asked not only to give the correct answer, but also to find 10 different solutions;

Students focus on both academic knowledge and extracurricular activities - music classes, theater productions and acting skills, development of artistic skills. It is easier for a child with a broad outlook to find a non-standard approach to solving a problem.

COMMUNICATION

The ability to communicate, openness and the ability to establish contact with other people, as well as to make the right impression on them.

Check if your child can:

Is it clear and interesting to express your ideas and thoughts?

speak confidently with a group of your peers, with a school principal, with other adults?

perform in front of an audience of 100 people?

How it is taught in a foreign school:

Students are encouraged to actively participate in discussions in the classroom. And the final assessment is influenced by the student's involvement in lectures and seminars and his ability to defend his point of view;

Schoolchildren are constantly surrounded by their peers and implement academic projects together, participate in sports and creative events, attend hobby groups;

Career days and meetings with universities are regularly held for high school students. Schools set aside time to develop a personal resume, self-presentation skills and interviews.

MANAGEMENT

It is the ability to bring people together to achieve a goal and inspire yourself and others to action. Initiative, demanding of oneself and others, attention to detail, the ability to delegate or do it yourself - all these are important qualities of an organizer.

Check if your child can:

organize your time so that you can keep up with your studies and take part in additional school activities?

put together a team to run cross country together or organize a party?

make quick decisions when things don't go as planned?

How it is taught in a foreign school:

time management skills are the first thing a student learns. Unlike Russian students, European students do not study from morning to evening. The whole day is scheduled by the clock, there is time for study, sports, hobbies, homework and, of course, time for rest;

Participation in numerous school events requires a variety of skills from a student, including the ability to organize an exhibition, a holiday, a performance, a debate, a sports match, and much more.

POSITIVE

Faith in yourself and in other people. This is such a view of the world in which a person can look at events from different angles and prefers to find positive in everything that surrounds him.

Check if your child can:

keep a smile on your face despite the challenges?

to fight and not give up, even when you fail to achieve the goal?

try to solve your problems on your own, without immediately resorting to your help?

How it is taught in a foreign school:

Support and attention of teachers, mentors and high school students. The school is well aware of the difficulties students face and is always ready to help with advice and pay attention to positive events.

A healthy competitive environment helps students focus on their goals and not on temporary setbacks.

CURIOSITY

Intellectual curiosity, thirst for new knowledge, interest in the world around and desire for new experiences. This is a natural quality of any child and it is important to preserve it.

Check if your child can:

look up from your phone or tablet and look around when you are driving?

when you find yourself in a new place, try to find out something about it?

ask questions about how the world works?

How it is taught in a foreign school:

The task of every teacher is not only to prepare a student for the final exams, but also to make him fall in love with his subject. The first thing that Russian children and parents notice is that students in European schools love to study.

Well-equipped classrooms and laboratories - here you can study not only theory, but also try everything in practice. Chemistry, physics, biology become especially fascinating.

School activities also include guest lecturers and thematic excursions. Children can learn first-hand about the subject and specialties: who you can become in the future, how you can apply the acquired knowledge in practice, what kind of employees employers want to see.

Most children are not very self-confident. They worry about entering a new social situation, about learning new skills, about having to complete a new task, even more difficult. They seek help and support from friends, parents, teachers, and this is natural.

Studying in European schools, students develop their social skills, becoming more self-confident. These skills have nothing to do with intelligence, the ability to quote Shakespeare in the original, or mentally multiply three-digit numbers. But the ability of a child to clearly formulate thoughts, offer alternatives and respect someone else's point of view will make him successful in all areas of life.
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