Social skills are the tools we use to interact in social situations and they are something we continually learn throughout childhood and beyond. They are important because they enable children to form and maintain healthy friendships as they grow up.
Social skills for children include being able to take turns, learning to lose or win gracefully and to be able to work as a team, but it is vital to remember that these are still quite complex actions. Fully grasping the concept of sharing, for example, often isn’t achieved until children are into the pre-school phase. So if a toddler is struggling to share a favourite toy, that’s perfectly understandable developmentally! As for children with SEND, they may be working at a different developmental age to their chronological age so we must take into account where they are developmentally for their social skills. Some children with SEND may also find the dynamics of social situations more difficult to understand.
There are lots of wonderful activities that you can do with babies, toddlers and young children to help support these skills through play. Here are two play-based activities that encourage social skills:
REMOTE CONTROLLED ROBOT
Suitable for: toddlers and pre-schoolers
This is an entertaining activity where children can take turns being a robot who is ‘controlled’ by the remote. It is brilliant for developing social skills and learning to process and follow verbal instructions.
Equipment
- Remote control (an old TV remote control or homemade from cardboard).
How to
- Chat about what a robot is and what remote controls are used for.
- If you are making the remote control, support the children to work as a team to design and make a suitable one.
- Explain that they will be pretending to direct each other around the room or outside space using the remote.
- Discuss what instructions you could give the ‘robot’ such as: ‘go’, ‘stop’, ‘move forward two steps’, ‘jump forward with two feet’ and ‘turn around’.
- Encourage the children to take turns to press the buttons on the remote control while shouting out the instructions to the rest of the group. (If a child uses sign language, use signs instead.)
Alternatives
- Swap roles. The children could be in charge of giving you the instructions instead of each other. This could help develop confidence in their language and communication skills as well as allowing more opportunities for them to work as a team.
Extension activity
- The children could work together to make the robot ‘programmable’, giving multiple instructions to the child who is the robot to carry out. Can the robot remember them all?
Skills developed
- Language and communication.
- Literacy/numeracy.
- Concentration.
- Social skills.
- Motor skills.
- Working memory.
ROLL THE BALL
Suitable for: babies and toddlers
Rolling a small, soft ball to a baby or toddler and encouraging them to push it back to you can be a fantastic introduction to the idea of taking turns.
Equipment
- A small, soft ball.
How to
- Gain the child’s attention by rolling the ball towards them.
- Encourage and support them to have a go at pushing and rolling the ball themselves.
- Praise and clap when they successfully push it towards you.
- Use their name and your name to state whose turn it is. For example, ‘Max’s turn’ and ‘Georgina’s turn’.
- If the child uses sign language, support them to use the relevant signs for ‘my turn’ and ‘your turn’ or each person’s name.
Alternatives
- Encourage and support children to push a small, soft ball towards each other.
Extension activity
- If they are starting to use words, use this as an opportunity to develop their use of names, enabling them to verbalise whose turn it is and associate people with their own names.
Skills developed
- Social skills.
- Language and communication.
- Concentration.
- Motor skills.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
- This is the third article in an eight-part series on practical ways to support the development of essential skills in children from birth to five, including those with special educational needs and disabilities.
- Georgina Durrant is the author of 100 Ways Your Child Can Learn Through Play, a book of play-based activities that help develop important skills for children with special educational needs. She is a former teacher/SENDCO, private tutor for children with SEND and the founder of The SEN Resources Blog, www.senresourcesblog.com.
