As we all know social skills also lead to improved cognitive abilities and better mental health. There are many ways to encourage a child's social skill development. It is important to teach these skills in the early phase of life as it can impact a child's social life and success in adulthood.
Man is a social animal and hence it becomes more important to have social skills. Social games are a great way to teach your children social skills in a fun way. When you teach skills in the form of games the learning becomes more enjoyable.
Listening is a vital social skill that everyone needs to learn. It is an important skill not only for social benefits but also for educational reasons. Good listeners tend to make friends more easily. It’s because they pay attention and their friends know they are valued. Additionally, listening in the classroom helps students learn concepts with less effort. Kids need to be aware of their emotions as well and what they mean. Teach them how to recognize emotions – Describe them, what they look like, and why they might feel a certain way. Eye contact is also an important social skill that many kids aren’t naturally good at. Kids should learn that during a conversation, whatever they’re looking at is perceived to be important. If they’re talking to a friend, but staring at their phone, that friend will think that they’re not paying attention to them. So it is important to be good at social skills you need to know gestures as well.
There are two aspects of communication that kids need to learn: verbal and non-verbal. Verbal communication has to do with the words that you say. Whereas non-verbal communication is how you communicate with your body and your facial expressions.
Here are some of the games to improve social skills:
• Smart Talking Book -This is a complete preschool book for toddlers which includes all basic learning from animals, fruits, vehicles, shapes and colours using colourful pictures and lovely sounds. Touching the words on the pages plays the words, sound effects and fun facts; hear the Learning Friends theme song and My Favorite Word by pressing the light-up star button. Fitted with a sound censor, this one-of-its-kind book interacts with kids and responds as they touch the images to help them understand and learn in a play way method.
• Talking Flash Cards - Flashcards allow children to interact with the information, making it easier to retain. The colourful and lovely pictures grab preschool kids' attention, through the pattern, letters, words and parent-child interaction in the form of combining, in the process of watching and playing to promote the baby's observation, voice, thinking, games, cognitive letters and words. These cards are a good visual learning tool, designed to enhance and encourage active recollection of information.
• The Telephone Game – You can play this game with small or large groups of kids, making it perfect for the classroom. To play, have kids line up or make a circle. Whisper a sentence to the first person, and have them whisper that exact sentence to the next person in line. This will continue until the sentence gets to the last person. That person will then announce what they heard to the entire group. Kids are always amazed at how the sentence changes! Use this as a lesson to teach kids that listening is important so that the meaning of what they need to know is not lost.
• Don’t Interrupt Card Game – For the social skills card game, kids play in pairs and take turns reading and answering a question. The other person must pay attention, not interrupt, and respond with a related question after. This game gets kids practising good conversation skills!
• Emotional Bingo – Kids can begin to recognize emotions and what they mean by playing EmotionalBingo. This social skills game is played exactly like traditional Bingo, with the only difference being that emotions are displayed on the Bingo cards instead of numbers.
• Eye Pointing Game – You’ll want to start playing this social skills game one-on-one or in small groups. To introduce the game, start by selecting two objects to place on the table. Use your eyes to look at one of the objects and see if someone can guess which object your eyes are “pointing” to. Discuss with kids how our eyes communicate information. As kids become familiar with this game, expand it by looking at a more detailed space.
• Blindfold Obstacle Course– This game is perfect for small groups of kids. Simply set up an obstacle course. One person will be blindfolded while the rest of the group works together to communicate how to get through the obstacle course.
These are some of the fun games which can develop your kid's social skills. As social skills can help them to communicate more effectively and efficiently as a result it will help them to maintain and grow relationships with friends, family, teachers, etc.
Disclaimer:- The opinions expressed in the post are the personal views of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Clapstore.