Preschool is a time for learning – not just numbers and letters, but also important life skills, such as learning how to healthily interact, play, and work productively with others. Therefore, social skills activities for preschoolers are highlighted in our preschool classroom. These activities will help your child develop these important skills while having fun and making friends in the process!
Social Skills Activities for Preschoolers:
- Playing Games: Games – of the board, card, imaginative, or physical variety – are not only lots of fun, they’re also a fantastic way to teach important skills like waiting your turn, playing cooperatively with others, following directions, and either winning or losing a round gracefully.
- Learning About & Identifying Emotions: Teaching children about emotions, and how to deal with them in a healthy way, through games and crafts is an integral cornerstone of preschool education, and one that will have long-term benefits in how your child interacts with others and themselves.
- Learning About Manners: Though many children already have an understanding of concepts such as sharing and saying “please” and “thank you” by the time they make it to preschool, preschool is an excellent time to reinforce these concepts in fun ways like games and stories that focus on being polite and making others feel comfortable and welcome.
- Storytime: Reading to children has a plethora of benefits, and one of those is helping teach social skills. Through the adventures (or misadventures) of characters, children can learn important skills such as healthy communication, mending hurt feelings, dealing with strong emotion, and working together. Not only that, but the act of sitting down for storytime is an opportunity for teaching patience and respect for others.
- Make-Believe & Roleplay: Imaginative play is incredibly important for children’s development for many reasons. Imaginative play is also a great way to get children to play together cooperatively and bond in a fun way, while learning conflict resolution and problem solving, among other skills.
- Group Arts: Making something together is an excellent way to teach kids how to get along and work productively in a group. Drawing pictures, building a tower, or helping each other put together a craft are examples of this.
- Free Time: Believe it or not, kids will learn a lot if you lean back a little bit and let them explore on their own – while supervising carefully, of course. Free time allows children to interact with their peers naturally in an unstructured way, which is important for developing friendships.
Lots of these activities can be replicated at home, as well. Making sure to schedule play dates or taking your child to activities and events where they can interact and cooperate with other children is a great way to reinforce these skills, as well as picking out books to read together that focus on interpersonal relationships, playing board or card games together, and encouraging them to act out imaginative fantasies.
Learn More at Kid’s Corner Preschools
If you’re interested in enrolling your child in preschool, or if you’d just like to learn more about how Kid’s Corner does things, give us a call anytime at (480) 267-9419 for Mesa, and (480) 267-9427 for Gilbert.