social emotional skills
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Friday Freebie – Monster Manners
Happy Friday! Halloween is getting close, are you ready for it?! This week I’ve shared some fun monster activities that can be used to celebrate Halloween, or anytime throughout the year. today, I wanted to share a monster activity that I absolutely love. This Monster Manners set is a great way to work on social emotional skills and help your students think about good choices and consequences. Download your set from Growing Kinders, and have a great weekend!
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Using Question of the Day in the Classroom
One of my favorite parts of every single day in my preschool classroom is when it was time to ask the question of the day. This was my chance to see where my students’ heads were at that day, and to get to know them a little better. I promise that it was a process to get our question of the day to a point where it was successful and the children would respond with thoughtful answers. We had to model how to answer questions, and encourage them to think of their own unique answers instead of repeating the same answer as the person who answered before them. Once the…
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Teaching Children to Respect Materials and Belongings
Accidents happen in the preschool classroom all day long – preschoolers just aren’t very coordinated. But we can reduce some of those accidents if we teach our students to treat classroom materials with care and respect. First and foremost, children have to see their teachers modeling how to treat materials with respect. When children see us helping with clean up time, they are more likely to participate. When you return materials to the correct location, the children will start to do this too. Children pick up on your cues and begin to internalize them as expectations. Another great strategy to use when teaching children to respect materials is self-talk. This…
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Random Acts of Kindness for Preschoolers
An overarching theme for preschoolers is empathy. Whether you’re trying to help them understand that others have feelings, or being touched by sweet moments of caring, empathy is part of every single day. One really fun way to involve preschoolers in caring about others is to practice random acts of kindness. Here are some ideas: Make cards for nursing home patients Collect coloring books and crayons for a children’s hospital Bake cookies for police officers or firefighters Write nice messages on sticky notes and leave them all over the school Paint hearts on rocks and drop them when you go on a walk Collect loose change and choose a cause…
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Freebie Friday – Respect
Happy Friday! The further we get into August, the faster the weeks seem to fly by – summer definitely has a way of disappearing before I’m ready for it to end! This week I’ve shared a number ideas for teaching children about friendship, opinions, and respect. Today’s freebie is another related activity to add to your files. This Social Story from For the Love of PreK is all about being kind. I love social stories for preschoolers because they are simple and to the point – the message is clear and easy to repeat throughout the day so that children are consistently reminded of the expectations. Go download your copy…
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Social Emotional Activities for Preschool
Social Emotional skills are a huge part of preschool. Skills like respecting others’ opinions, taking turns, and managing emotions are the foundational skills that children need in order to be successful. These also tend to be the kind of lessons that present themselves in the preschool classroom over and over again, but when asked to put them on a lesson plan, it can be difficult to come up with a planned experience that it actually valuable for your particular group of children. Over the years I’ve created a number of social emotional activities for my students simply because I couldn’t find anything else out there. When I started sharing activities…
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Discussing Opinions with Preschoolers
One of my favorite things about working with preschoolers is that they are just starting to form their own opinions about everything – from what they want to wear to school to how they feel about vegetables. While this makes for interesting conversations, it can also create some friction between classmates as they learn that others don’t necessarily share their opinions. I love to use a question of the day, and I strive for questions that require an extended response because I want my students to think about their answer as they practice the language required for this type of answer. Often, the children get very passionate about their answers.…
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Making Valentine’s Day Meaningful to Preschoolers
Valentine’s Day is more than just a day for a party, it’s a holiday that’s perfect for exploring social emotional concepts. Focusing on some of these specific skills, such as relationships with adults and peers, empathy, and emotion recognition and expression, is a perfect way to give meaning to a holiday that otherwise might just be a day for a party. Using holidays to teach specific content is how we make that content relevant and meaningful for preschoolers. I always try to focus on special relationships during the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day. We talk about love, and what that means. In a preschooler’s world love usually means having…
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Community art projects
I love to do community art projects! When children work on the same project they learn to value others’ ideas and perspectives, they have to share materials and work space, and they practice communicating with each other. On top of all of these wonderful lessons, community art projects are also better for the classroom logistically. You don’t have to worry about having the same amount of materials for everyone, you can hang one large piece of finished art work instead of 20 little ones, and cubbies don’t fill up with excessive amount of artwork to send home. Plus they require far less drying space! Here are some amazing ideas for…
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Preschool Activities that meet Social Emotional Standards
It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for some activities aligned to a specific standard. This is the sixth week of this feature, and we’re still on social emotional standards. (The Standards that I use every day, and am most comfortable with are Ohio’s Early Learning Development Standards – you can review them here, however I’ve found that even if your State’s standards differ, many of these activities can still be aligned similarly). Let’s see what great ideas we can find today!Domain: Social Emotional DevelopmentStrand: RelationshipsTopic: Interactions with AdultsAll children should be able to make a list of adults that they trust and feel comfortable with. The key to meeting this particular standard…
