Social skills are critical to the foundation for later academic growth and achievement in schools and work related skills. Social skills help children form positive relationships, communicate effectively, understand body language and social cues, work as a team, share and even play together. In preschool we use two different curriculums to help aid our teaching of positive social skills; We Thinkers and Second Step (Social-Emotional Skills for Early Learning).
The We Thinkers curriculum is divided into five story books that teach thoughts and feelings, how to follow a group plan, thinking with your eyes, how to keep your body in the group, and how to use whole body listening.
The Second Step curriculum piggybacks on the ideas from the We Thinkers curriculum. It teaches skills in the following four areas; skills for learning, empathy, emotion management, and friendship skills and problem solving. Children gain skills that help them become better learners, learn to identify and understand their own and others’ feelings, how to calm down when they have strong feelings, and how to make and keep friends, as well as how to solve problems with others in a positive way.
The Preschool Team met a few summers to develop a plan to introduce skills and language from both curriculums during the first 20 days of school. The language from the We Thinkers curriculum will follow our students through their third grade year, so it is important to expose them to this language from the beginning of their school experience. Through the use of our first 20 days’ curriculum we were able to provide students with social skills to help make their first years of school impactful and increase social independence.
