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It takes more than academic skills to sufficiently prepare children for rewarding lives. It is the responsibility of parents and educators to provide learning experiences designed to foster life skills for children, including social and emotional skills. In this article, we’ll explore life skills for students and provide activities that help children develop in these essential areas.
Life Skills for Children
The classroom is a place where children learn both how to think and how to behave. Nurturing social and emotional skills helps to shape child behavior. It also helps to promote the long-term success of a child.
In academia, some “softer” life skills necessary for living a rewarding life are referred to as executive function and self-regulation. These are terms that refer to skills like focus, switching focus, and coping with distractions. They also refer to self-control, working memory, and mental flexibility.
These soft skills are important life skills children will grow up and use to function well in society, hold a job, and connect with peers.
Additionally, these core skills provide the underpinnings for other life skills like empathy and acceptance, or social skills like politeness and cooperation. All of these skills help children to thrive in group settings while building confidence in themselves. Exercises designed to encourage children to practice empathy, acceptance, politeness, cooperation, etc., create opportunities for children to develop core skills of executive function and self-regulation.
Teaching activities that promote life skills for children can be incorporated into the classroom or implemented at home. These activities can help prepare children for success.
Examples of Life Skills Activities
There are many life skills activities educators and parents can incorporate into the education of the children in their care. Educators might find it more useful to tailor life skills activities to the specific needs of the children in their particular classrooms. It’s not only possible to do this, it might prove essential in many cases. Different groups of children have different specific needs, and the principles of teaching core skills will be similar. Here are a few examples to give educators and parents a place to start thinking about designing life skills activities for primary school children:
Bake a Snack
Every aspect of baking contributes positively to a child’s development. It gives a child a sense of accomplishment and gratification that they can do something both positive and constructive for themselves. Baking provides an opportunity for children to practice patience and to practice recognizing the connection between actions and results. Bonus: make it a group activity and build in chances for children to cultivate social skills and communication.
Learn Emergency Numbers
There are a lot of things considered by adults to be common knowledge. As a result, it can be a worrying thing for a child to feel unprepared. Helping children with knowledge such as the numbers for their local police departments and fire departments can provide a sense of security.
Learn to Use Simple Tools
Understanding the use of tools, like screwdrivers and socket wrenches, fosters a broader understanding of how the world is put together. It encourages imagination in addition to providing a sense of self-reliance.
Grow Plants from Seeds
Growing plants from seeds provides children a chance to cultivate patience and sustained attention over weeks. Furthermore, growing living things provides an opportunity for children to develop nurturing instincts towards other living things. Make it a group activity and give children a chance to practice mutual accountability and working together.
Sew Buttons on Clothes
Culturally, many of us are getting further and further away from the source of our commodities. We don’t typically think about where our stuff comes from. As a result, children might develop a sense that if their stuff breaks they can’t do anything about it. Learning a skill like putting buttons back on clothes provides children with the opportunity to learn that they can take care of their things. In turn, this creates a sense of confidence and contribution.
Play Games as a Group
We know that playing is an integral part of childhood learning. Additionally, when children play in a group they learn social skills and how to cooperate with others. Pull out a board game, play charades in teams, or enhance listening skills with the game of telephone. Because social emotional skills are so important in a child’s development, interacting with peers in a cooperative setting promotes important life skills.
Teaching Life Skills in Primary School
It’s important to prepare children in multiple areas of life. The whole concept of life skills may include practical skills, social skills, and academic skills which all prepare children for success in adulthood. Here are some activities you can implement to enhance social emotional life skills:
When educators need assistance with lessons that encourage core skills like executive function and self-regulation, Soul Shoppe helps with online SEL programs. Soul Shoppe encourages empathy and emotional awareness in children. Whether helping in the classroom or assisting parents at home, Soul Shoppe brings social skills to the forefront of the discussion. Click for more information on SEL Programs for Elementary Schools or our parent support programs.
Teaching is a challenging job. Creating an environment where children can develop comes with a range of obstacles.
As educators, the best-case scenario is to recruit the children, in the long run, to help in their own education. Where it is appropriate, it’s not only valuable to help children take ownership of their own education, it is a mark of successful education.
Self-soothing is a particularly important area to give children tools to take care of themselves. Teachers and parents won’t be present every time a child feels worried or anxious. In the long run, it would not be helpful to a child’s development if they came to rely on the adults in their lives to fix their problems. To ensure balance in development, it’s essential for children to learn how to self-soothe.
Teaching Children How To Self-Soothe
What is Self Soothing?
People instinctively try to soothe their own stress. In children, this instinct to self-soothe can often look like fidgeting. Thumb-sucking, biting fingernails, and sucking on clothes, are all examples of potential self-soothing habits that children sometimes use to help them cope with stressful situations. Children might develop many other habits and behaviors to self-soothe as they grow. As a result, their instinctive behaviors might evolve or change.
Self-soothing can take many forms. Not all of them are clear and external, and not all of them are healthy or helpful. In fact, some children have trouble developing mechanisms for soothing their own stressful emotions. As children age, it becomes more important to teach children how to self-soothe, since some of the behaviors that small children use to self-soothe grow less socially appropriate.
In cases where children have developed potentially unhelpful self-soothing methods, or in situations where they have trouble developing self-soothing strategies of any kind, it might be prudent to teach better self-soothing techniques.
How to Teach an Older Child to Self-Soothe
Because coping with stress is the goal of self-soothing, children might instinctively resist learning new or different self-soothing strategies. An attempt to teach alternative self-soothing habits might look to children like taking away their coping mechanisms. As a result, educators must approach teaching new techniques with delicacy.
At the same time, it can be important to help children learn better self-soothing strategies as they grow. Stressors increase as children age. The self-soothing techniques that may have come instinctively to children may grow insufficient as they age.
The self-soothing techniques might also contribute to the stress and anxiety of the child if the technique attracts ridicule from other children. This might end up sabotaging their technique because a child might grow self-conscious about their instinctive technique, try not to use it, and then grow more and more agitated. Therefore, they need to replace the self-soothing technique with another soothing strategy.
When deciding how to teach an older child to self-soothe, there are two stages an educator should go through.
The first stage of teaching a new strategy for self-soothing is identifying any self-soothing techniques a child might already have a habit of using to cope with stress. For example:
Biting nails
Thumb sucking
Picking at cuticles
Sucking on clothing
General fidgeting
This is far from an exhaustive list. Educators and parents need to get to know their children’s habits. Once they do, it will become possible to identify which behaviors manifest to cope with stress. Identifying the self-soothing habits adopted by children will also mean gaining an idea of what causes them stress and gives them a need to use self-soothing strategies.
After working with the child to learn more about their self-soothing habits, then it’s possible to help them learn other self-soothing techniques. Some self-soothing techniques that might be useful to suggest include:
Changing their environment or something about their environment
Doing some stretches
Imagining soothing imagery
Focused breathing or counting breaths
Butterfly hugs–or the practice of gently patting themself on the chest with their hands crossed and telling themself they are safe
These self-soothing techniques are valuable tools to add to an educator’s or parent’s toolbox. There are a lot of legitimate and valuable self-soothing techniques out there. When deciding how to teach an older child to self-soothe, there are several options. Teaching these techniques prepares them for strong childhood development and long-term success in life.
Key adult figures in any child’s development include their parents, guardians, and teachers. Sometimes those are the same people if the children are homeschooled.
It’s valuable for every adult involved in the development and preparation of children to approach that responsibility seriously. It’s good to grow more familiar with the tools currently in use and to learn more about the other ways of doing things with proven value.
According to the National Library of Medicine, there are four different parenting styles (NIH). Parents will tend to default to one parenting style depending on their personality, but they will also use tools from the other parenting styles depending on the demands of a given situation. A balanced approach to parenting overall may prove most effective in the long run. So, it’s important to understand all four styles of parenting and the impact of parenting styles on child development.
4 Different Parenting Styles
What are the Four Basic Parenting Styles?
Let’s break down what the four basic parenting styles are and then take a look at their impact on the development of children.
These four different parenting styles were identified by the psychologists, Baumrind, Maccoby, and Martin (MDPI).
Authoritarian parenting is rules-based parenting. It’s a parenting style based on structure and the understanding of consequences if rules are not followed. Authoritarian parenting tends to set high expectations and limits flexibility.
When children develop in an authoritarian environment, they are usually well-behaved, because they tend to grow up used to associating misbehavior with negative consequences. Children who grow up in an authoritarian parenting environment are generally good at following rules, since they develop a sense that things go well when they follow rules.
Children who grow up in an authoritarian parenting environment may also develop tendencies toward aggression. Or, they may develop shyness and social ineptness. It is possible that children developing in mainly authoritarian environments will develop poor self-esteem without the situation getting tempered with other parenting styles.
Authoritative Parenting
A communication-heavy style of parenting, authoritative parenting is based on guidelines and clear statements of expectations by both parents and children. In an authoritative parenting style, while parents retain their role as provider and primary decision-maker, children are encouraged to participate in decisions around setting goals and expectations.
Authoritative parenting strategies create a developmental environment where children gain confidence, responsibility, and a sense of self-regulation. Children who grow up in an authoritative parenting environment tend to develop a sense of their own value. As a result, they are more likely to aim for and achieve high performance in whatever endeavor they set their minds to.
Permissive Parenting
While the context of permissive parenting might create a warm and nurturing environment, it can also create an environment where children develop a sense that their actions have no consequences. Parents with tendencies towards permissive parenting styles often act more like friends than parents.
Growing up with few rules can encourage children to develop habits of indulgence with potential negative consequences. For example, poor self-regulation around snacks. Children who grow up in a permissive parenting environment may also develop lax habits about homework and excessive habits about entertainment. A lack of significant moderation in parenting can lead to an absence of sense of urgency in a child’s development.
Uninvolved Parenting
An uninvolved parenting environment is an environment with little to no structure or involvement between parents and children. Uninvolved parenting environments still provide for a child’s basic needs, but do not create much structure for the child.
Without any particular discipline or encouragement structure, children who develop in an uninvolved parenting environment often grow to possess a high sense of self-sufficiency and resilience. On the other hand, these children might also have trouble controlling and expressing emotions. Or, they might develop ineffective or relatively non-existent coping strategies. They may also have trouble academically and socially due to an untethered sense of accomplishment and consequence. Children who develop in an uninvolved parenting environment may also have trouble building strong relationships with their peers.
Impact of Parenting Styles on Child Development
It is fair to say that a child will develop in profoundly different ways depending on the most prevalent style of parenting.
Different children and different situations need different kinds of nurturing. Everyone with the responsibility of nurturing children should develop their own parenting skills in order to foster the best possible developmental environments for the children in their charge.
Soul Shoppe provides social emotional learning programs for children. For more than twenty years we’ve created tools and empowered educators to incorporate emotional intelligence into curriculum. Soul Shoppe strategies encourage empathy and emotional awareness in children. Whether helping in the classroom or assisting parents at home, Soul Shoppe brings social skills to the forefront of the discussion. Click for our parent support programs.
Humans are naturally social creatures. Community helps with mental health. While we have a need for community, not everyone has the same abilities to connect with others. Educators are often responsible for sharing the best techniques on how to teach social skills to help create confidence. At Soul Shoppe, we specialize in helping educators and parents learn how to teach and model social skills and social-emotional learning techniques.
Strong social skills create a solid foundation for long-term success in life. A holistic teaching approach includes exercises, lessons, and learning opportunities for children.
How To Teach Social Skills
It’s good to review appropriate social skills with children frequently. As adults, it’s been a long time since we’ve learned appropriate social skills, and we might take for granted that social skills are obvious, when to a child they might not be.
As far as teachable skills go, social skills have an advantage in the classroom. Learning how to socialize in a diverse environment can help skills grow and they will get stronger with practice. Additionally, there are ways to practice them virtually.
How to Teach Social Skills to a Child in the Classroom
The method for deciding how to teach social skills to a student is similar to teaching other skills. It also has differences.
Teaching social skills to a child is the same as teaching other skills in that it requires demonstration, imitation, and repetition. After all, that’s how we teach math or reading skills.
Designing how to teach social skills is a different process in its particulars.
In order to do it well, an educator must follow the interests of the child. Children come from different backgrounds, and an educator must adjust and respond to this.
An educator must learn to ask the right questions, discovering what social skills the child needs to strengthen and which ones they already understand.
Roleplaying can be a powerful tool for an educator who teaches social skills to elementary school students. With demonstrations of example scenarios, children can practice social skills in controlled settings.
A more complicated, but essential, aspect of teaching social skills to a child includes teaching empathy. Asking questions like, “Can you imagine how that makes them feel?” will encourage this.
Children have not yet learned all the coping skills that they will eventually need, and social skills involve so many emotions that they will inevitably create strong emotions. Work within the limitations of the students involved. Practicing to the point of frustration can hinder results. (Harvard)
In the end, the most important aspect of teaching social skills is being a good role model. Children learn so much by watching that the most powerful teaching aid for any educator is their own behavior.
List of Social Skills to Teach
It’s important not to assume that social skills might come naturally to someone. No one knows the assumptions by which anyone else is raised, and it is the responsibility of educators to create a setting where children can learn the skills they need to prepare for a rewarding life.
When deciding how to teach social skills to students, begin with a list of subjects. Treat it like any other discipline. Here is a list of subjects to help you get started:
Sharing. For some children, sharing their thoughts and feelings doesn’t come naturally. Or, they might be nervous about sharing thoughts and feelings. Additionally, they might not know when it’s socially acceptable or appropriate. Encouraging sharing is like granting permission, which helps to foster this.
Listening. Children typically have the natural ability to absorb what’s going on around them. However, not all children have a natural instinct to quietly listen and pay attention to the people around them. You can use listening skills activities such as those outlined here, to help children develop these skills.
Following directions. Cooperating with community expectations is a large part of developing social skills. Children shouldn’t necessarily learn to follow instructions without thinking, but it’s valuable to learn how to cooperate with the goals of the group and recognize when an authority figure has a reasonable direction for their goals.
Collaborating and cooperating. Children must learn to collaborate and cooperate with their peers. This is a large aspect of creating strong social skills. It’s valuable for children to learn how to respect and participate in community activities. We provide some ideas for cooperative games for kidshere.
Patience. This is an important skill and can be particularly challenging to develop in a world of instant gratification. Many social situations require waiting calmly and graciously. Intentionally slowing some things down in the classroom and creating situations where children must wait will help them practice patience.
Empathy. Understanding how others may feel and the ability to consider these feelings is a pillar of social awareness. Teaching empathy can be incorporated through everyday interactions and through planned activities. We provide some ideas here.
Respecting boundaries. We don’t necessarily need to know why people have certain boundaries. However, it’s important children learn to respect the boundaries that people set.
Positivity. It’s amazing how powerful it can be to put a positive spin on realities and how much this can improve social interactions.
For some children, a few of these social skills will seem intuitive. When deciding how to teach social skills to a child, it’s important to recognize that not all social skills are intuitive, and yet all social skills should be learned and exercised. (Homer)
Teaching Social Skills Virtually
If unable to teach social skills in the classroom, or if an educator would like assistance teaching social skills, you can receive help with virtual social learning activities. Soul Shoppe provides social emotional learning programs for children and educators that can be completed online. Soul Shoppe strategies encourage empathy and emotional awareness in children. Whether helping in the classroom or assisting parents at home, Soul Shoppe brings social skills to the forefront of the discussion. Click for more information on SEL Programs for Elementary Schools or our parent support programs.
Feelings can be complicated, and especially as a child, they can be difficult to navigate and express. It’s therefore important to help children find the words they need to vocalize their feelings.
When we talk about expressing feelings, a few clarifications are needed. Feelings and emotions are not the same. It’s tempting to use the words interchangeably, but it isn’t quite accurate to do so.
According to an article from Wake Forest University, feelings result from many different sensations, such as hunger or weariness. Feelings can come from emotions as well. Feelings are always conscious experiences, even if sometimes it’s unclear what’s causing them. (Wake)
Emotions are more complicated and unconscious. They are responses to layered experiences. According to the book, Discovering Psychology, they include “a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral or expressive response.” (Very Well)
The first major step in discovering how to express your feelings in words is distinguishing whether the sensations are feelings or emotions.
How To Express Your Feelings in Words
Words to Describe Emotions and Feelings
In general, expressing emotions takes fewer words. At the same time, it requires courage. Children might find it difficult to voice the emotions they’re experiencing.
Help your child or students with vocabulary that enables communication of emotions.
The six basic emotions are:
Anger
Fear
Joy
Love
Sadness
Surprise
After a child identifies one of these emotions, then it becomes easier to start talking about feelings.
Feelings can come from emotions. For example:
Envy can be a feeling that comes from anger.
People feel panic as a result of fear.
Relief can be a feeling proceeding from joy.
Sometimes people feel longing because of the emotion of love.
Humiliation can be a feeling that comes from sadness.
Feelings and emotions can be complex. Panic might come from fear, but then it might lead to anger. Feelings of shame can sometimes stem from a moment that started as joyful.
Once an emotion or feeling has been identified, it’s easier to choose appropriate coping mechanisms.
Among the most effective tools for expressing feelings in healthy ways is the, “I feel…When people…I need…Will you please…” formation. (SoulShoppe)
This formation may need to be broken down, especially for younger children.
Start with just the “I feel…” part.
For example…
I feel frustrated.
I feel worried.
I feel nervous.
After children get used to identifying their feelings and emotions, start asking them to identify the cause of their feelings. Use the formation, “I feel…when people…”
For example…
I feel frustrated when people talk about how I pronounce words.
I feel worried when people remind me I have a math quiz.
I feel nervous when people talk about how I wear glasses.
Once they start getting the hang of associating their feelings with things happening in their lives, start asking them to begin looking for the reason those events matter. Use the “I feel…when people…I need…” formation.
For example…
I feel frustrated when people talk about how I pronounce words. I need to feel safe when I talk.
I feel worried when people remind me I have a math quiz. I need to learn my math problems.
I feel nervous when people talk about how I wear my glasses. I need to feel safe wearing my glasses.
The point of this formation is to give children more tools to communicate what’s going on inside them.
The last step is giving children the tools to ask for what they need. For example…
I feel frustrated when people talk about how I pronounce words. I need to feel safe when I talk. Will you please stop pointing out how I pronounce words?
I feel worried when people remind me I have a math quiz. I need to learn my math problems. Will you please help me study?
I feel nervous when people talk about how I wear my glasses. I need to feel safe wearing my glasses. Will you please stop talking about my glasses?
Why a Child has Difficulty Expressing Emotions
The reason a child might have trouble expressing emotions and feelings is simply that they’ve experienced fewer things than an adult, and some feelings are new. As a result, they’ve had fewer opportunities to learn the terminology necessary to express their emotions and feelings. According to Vanderbilt University, “Children get angry, sad, frustrated, nervous, happy, or embarrassed, but they often do not have the words to talk about how they are feeling. Instead, they sometimes act out these emotions in very physical and inappropriate ways.” (Vanderbilt) Children can end up experiencing frustration when they haven’t yet learned the words necessary to explain what they are feeling.
Therefore, teaching your child to identify and express emotions and feelings is of paramount importance. Gently helping children to better grasp the vocabulary and tools to identify and express emotions will prepare them for a far more rewarding life. This is because when they learn how to express their feelings in words they can then progress to learning coping mechanisms to express their feelings in healthy ways.
Soul Shoppe provides social emotional learning programs for children. For more than twenty years we’ve created tools and empowered educators to incorporate emotional intelligence into curriculum. Soul Shoppe strategies encourage empathy and emotional awareness in children. Whether helping in the classroom or assisting parents at home, Soul Shoppe brings social skills to the forefront of the discussion. Click for more information on SEL Programs for Elementary Schools or our parent support programs.
Most adults understand that gratitude is more than saying thank you when receiving a gift or compliment. Gratitude is an attitude of the heart.
Some parents may ask, “What is gratitude for kids?” It’s one thing to teach children to say thank you–express gratitude–and it’s another to live with an attitude of gratitude.
This article will discuss how to teach gratitude to kids. We’ll also share some great gratitude activities for kids.
What Is Gratitude For Kids?
When some of our team members were on-site at a school just before the pandemic hit, they discussed gratitude with a group of children. One child said, “Gratitude means you’re happy when your parents give you something.” The team smiled at the child and used their response to discuss further.
Webster’s dictionary defines gratitude as “A feeling of appreciation or thanks.” Children experience feelings–or attitudes–of thanks many times throughout their days. When a teacher calls on them in class–thus expressing an interest in their thoughts–or when a classmate compliments them. Other instances can include when someone lets them borrow a pencil, or someone else plays nicely with them at recess.
All these examples help children connect the idea of gratitude to the feeling of thanks.
When we talk about what gratitude is for kids, we need to remember not to focus on material goods but on the actions of others and whatever provision we have in our lives.
A child in one of our online sessions explained gratitude this way, “It is how I felt when my mom smiled at me when I was nice to my sister.” At 9-years old, this child expressed a social-emotional response that led to them feeling warm and accepted.
Another student in high school described gratitude as “Recognizing the fact that someone else truly sees me.” This response indicates a more developed understanding of the complex nature of feelings and interpersonal relationships. It also describes an internal response to an outward stimulus.
We share these examples, in particular, to highlight the fact that how you explain gratitude to a child will vary in terms of their ages. Fortunately, most children have experienced this and therefore, can relate to definitions of the words and actions that exemplify what it feels like internally.
The children’s entertainment organization PBS reminds us that children imitate the adults in their lives. To that end, we can show children what gratitude looks like when we consistently thank others for both big and small acts of kindness.
PBS writes, “Encourage your child to follow suit. When you write a thank you note to someone they know, let them add a picture or dictate a few words. As they get older, encourage them to write their own thank you cards or make thank you gifts for people who have touched their lives, such as teachers, coaches, or community helpers.” Showing gratitude in front of your children and then involving them in expressions of appreciation helps them make the connections between what gratitude looks like and how it feels.
There are several activities teachers can use in their classrooms, and parents can use at home to teach gratitude to kids.
Gratitude Activities for Kids
These activities can bring gratitude to life and help kids celebrate the positive feelings associated with such a fantastic attitude!
Each of the following gratitude activities for kids can be modified to your child’s level of development.
Create a Gratitude Jar
All you need to create a gratitude jar is a large clear container, a stack of sticky notes, and a pen (or brightly colored markers if you’re feeling creative).
Each evening, invite everyone in the family to write or draw something they are grateful for. They can depict something that happened that day or a mainstay in their lives, such as their pet, a favorite food, or a special friend. On Fridays, read the gratitude notes as a family and celebrate each one with smiles, applause, etc.
Create a Gratitude Vision Board
Vision boards are an excellent way for children to keep the positive aspects of their lives in front of them so when they’re feeling down, isolated, or sad, they can quickly reference their vision boards and remind themselves how much they have to be grateful for.
Gather magazines, construction paper, stickers, and any other media to help children describe what it means to be grateful. Have them create a list of things, people, or places for which they are thankful. Then have them fill their vision boards with words or photos that represent the items on their list.
Gratitude Prompts
Gratitude prompts are a great way to help children begin a consistent gratitude practice. All they need to do is consider each prompt and then fill in the blanks. The goal is to identify at least three things in each category they are thankful for. Then have them share.
Have children choose three people in their lives who have treated them with kindness or consistently made them feel seen and heard. Then invite them to write a thank you note to each of the people they’ve chosen. The notes should include three ways in which the person made them feel loved or cared for and three ways in which they learned something about gratitude due to the person’s kindness.
Ask the students to send these notes via email, mail, or in-person with their parents’ help.
Teaching gratitude to kids helps them recognize what thankfulness feels like and looks like, as well as how it can improve the lives of those who give it and receive it. Gratitude is a powerful tool in teaching children that they can recognize beauty and kindness in the world and offer it to others.
Soul Shoppe’s mission is to create safe environments that bring forth a culture of compassion, connection, and curiosity. Our innovative, interactive, and highly effective social emotional learning programs give parents, homeschoolers, teachers, and corporations important lifelong skills. Our online programs include the Peacemakers Program, Respecting Differences, Tools of the Heart, and more.
