Everything You Need to Know About Social Skills for Preschoolers

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Preschool is one of my favorite stages of parenting.

Preschoolers are always full of wonder and excitement, and it’s so fun to watch their understanding of the world explode.

It’s also, however, a really frustrating stage.

See, preschoolers know what they want, but they don’t always know how to communicate what they want.

And where does that lead? Meltdown city!

So how do we help our preschoolers develop their social communication skills?

Well, you don’t have to go it alone. I’m going to share with you everything you need to know about social skills for preschoolers!

How to Teach Preschoolers Social Skills

*This post is sponsored by Mrs. Wordsmith Social Journey. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Please see my full disclosure for details.

Everything You Need to Know About Social Skills for Preschoolers

You might think that social skills are just about teaching your kids to play nicely with their peers, but there is so much more to it than that!

What are Social Skills?

Social skills are all of the skills we use to communicate and interact with each other, both verbally and non-verbally.

Of course, that includes playing nicely with their peers.

But it also includes skills like:

  • The ability to communicate their basic needs to a grown up.
  • The ability to recognize emotions in other people.
  • The ability to label their own emotions and feelings.
  • Their understanding of social norms like sharing and taking turns.

Plus way, way more!

Social Skills in Preschool

For many kids, preschool is the first time they’re spending extended time around other kids, and their social skills become more important than ever before.

Preschool is also the age at which children can easily learn new skills, so it’s the perfect time to focus on practicing new social skills!

The Natural Development of Social Skills

There is a natural development of social skills that children go through, and it’s important to understand this progression when practicing social skills with your preschooler.

First, you have self-awareness.

Self-awareness is all about recognizing your own feelings and being able to name them.

Think outside the box here, beyond just ‘happy’ or ‘sad’.

Kids can feel nervous, excited, hungry, tired, frustrated, grumpy…

Next is resilience… This is all about how we face challenges.

Resilience is what helps us keep going when things are hard, and what teaches us the way we should act in certain situations.

Then there’s creativity.

This is all about using your imagination to come up with new ideas and solve problems.

Next, we have communication.

Communication is about being able to share your own thoughts and feelings with other people in a way that makes sense.

Then finally we have community.

This is about understanding the differences between people and connecting with people who are different from us in a respectful way.

These are the critical social skills to practice with your preschooler each and every day.

But how can you fit in social skill practice to your already busy day?

Adding Social Skills Practice to Your Day

To practice social skills with my preschooler, we’ve been using the Social Journey from Mrs. Wordsmith. It’s a subscription box that delivers unique social learning activities right to my door!

It makes it so easy to add social skills practice to our day naturally.

We start by reading the hilarious book that introduces some new social vocabulary.

My preschooler loves the brightly colored and funny pictures!

Then each day we do an activity from the fun activity book that is included in the Social Journey box.

I like that each day has different activities, and they reinforce skills like letter recognition, sight words, and fine motor skills.

Then we add in some playing time with the social vocabulary cards.

They continue the fun pictures from the story and we use them to talk about each of the new words that we’re learning.

Mrs. Wordsmith Social Journey

We love Mrs. Wordsmith Social Journey, a monthly subscription box that delivers brand new social vocabulary activities right to your door!

My preschooler really enjoyed the colorful and funny storybook that came in his box.

We also had a lot of fun with the bright and colorful word cards. They’re organized by the different stages of social development that we talked about above, so we were able to work on each area as my son was ready to.

Plus there’s a new activity to try each and every day!

Click here and use the code: ParentingChaos10 to get 10% off your Mrs. Wordsmith Subscription!

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Ends – 9/15
Prize: Mrs Wordsmith 12 month Subscription to The Social Journey Monthly boxes
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How to Teach Preschoolers Social Skills

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