School-Age Activities With Socio-Emotional Skills

What is Socio-Emotional Development?

• Socio-emotional development begins at birth. From the most basic, involuntary responses of infancy-crying when they're hungry. For example, children are learning that how they behave affects the way the world responds to them. Socio-emotional development refers to the development of emotional intelligence, or utilizing emotions along with logic to make good decisions; self-esteem, or sense of self; and social skills. Children develop these skills through normal play and interaction with others, and there are activities you can do to help optimize their development. These activities are also good to use with children who have developmental delays or disabilities.

Socio-Emotional Activities

• Pretend play is an excellent way to practice social skills and develop emotional intelligence. Have your dolls experience different social situations like going to the store and meeting new people. Introduce difficult social situations as well. For example, add a third doll and have her call your doll a mean name. Guide your child and her doll through several scenarios: What would she do if she had been called that name? How can she make you feel better? Guided play like this will reinforce manners, compassion, and empathy -- all important social skills and factors in healthy emotional intelligence. Knowing she can make wise choices and help others feel better will foster healthy self-esteem based on the good person she is, not external factors like looks or grades.

Development Products and Games

• There are many products designed to encourage socio-emotional development in children, including games, books that illustrate different expressions and allow children to copy the faces on their own, and flash cards with faces showing various emotions. These can be purchased from online stores like Therapro that sell items to enhance the lives of people with disabilities.

  Play Face Bingo. Draw a grid on a piece of paper, five squares across and five down. In each square, draw a picture of a face, or cut and paste photos of faces from magazines. You should have a good mix of facial expressions like happy, angry, sad and confused. It's ideal to have at least two pictures of each emotion on each grid. Write the corresponding emotions on slips of paper and draw them out one by one. When your child identifies the face that matches the expression, have him tell you something that would make him feel that way.

  Have a group of children play a round of Compliments. One child offers a compliment or praise to another, who then does the same for another child, and so on until all the children have been complimented. This is a fun way to end a school day or pass time around the dinner table and build socio-emotional skills at the same time.