Social Skills Practice

Yesterday I encouraged you to go outside to sing songs. Today, let’s get Mother Nature to help us develop our students’ social skills.

We often tell our students to use their words, share and take turns, but it’s very important that we take the time to show them how. Equally important is that we provide them with the time and place to practice these skills. 

Children often don’t transfer skills learned in one location to another. Prosocial skills role-played in the classroom, often aren’t applied on the playground when they are needed. This is why it’s important that students practice the skills in the location they will be using them. 

Take your students to the playground to learn social skills on location.

Teach the prosocial skills you want to see in the outdoor learning environment, too.

Useful sentences for children include:

“Can I play with you?”

“Can I have a turn?”

“Can I have that …?”

Useful answers include:

“Yes.”

“Yes, you can play with me.”

“Yes, you can have a turn.”

“No, I am playing with it now. I will give it to you next.”

Children need support to take “no” for an answer. I remind children who say “no”, that they must remember to give the desired item to their peer when they are finished with it. At first, I was surprised how often they remembered. Now I’ve come to trust that the children will remember. When given the opportunity, children often demonstrate fairness and kindness.

Choose an interesting object from nature.

To practice sharing, I choose an interesting object from nature such as sticks, stones or pinecones.

I put a collection of the desired object in the center of our meeting place. We talk about sharing and politely asking for things.

Usually all of the four year olds will want whatever it is that I have. They are enthusiastic that way. They make my job easy.

I ask each of them to say, “Can I have a pinecone?”

First, I share with each student

I answer, “Yes, you can have a pinecone.” I give each student a pinecone. If they ask for two, I give them two pinecones.

Then I have the children practice their sentences and share pinecones with one another.

Next, the children share with one another.

For the rest of our time outdoors, I watch the children carefully. If they need support to ask their peers to share toys and resources, I am there to assist.

When I see children sharing, I let them know I’ve noticed. “I see you are sharing the cups in the mud kitchen!” 

“You are sharing the spades in the sandbox.”

If you have older students, take them out to the playground to role play common recess problems and come up with their own solutions. Sometimes it is difficult for children to transfer skills learned in one location to another. Students will have more success when they practice pro-social behaviors where they should occur – in the cafeteria, on the playground, in the school hallway.