8 Activities to Aid Social and Emotional Learning in your Child

Social skills involving sharing, interaction and expressing views are viewed by parents as valuable to a child's development, so children’s educational specialist and editor of Waybuloo Magazine, Stephanie Cooper, has put together some fun and practical activities to encourage really positive behaviour with young children.

Sharing

1. Fruity Treats
Put together some fruity treats for your family. Choose the fruit that you know each person will like and arrange it in a bowl for them. Make sure that everyone has some.

2. Give a Picture
Create a drawing or a painting to give to someone special. When it’s finished, write a special message on the picture especially for the person they’re going to give it to. Ask your child to think of what to say, and write it down for them.

Listening

3. Simon Says
Play Simon says… touch your ears then touch your grown-up’s ears. Touch your nose, then touch your grown-up’s nose and so on.

4. Hide and Seek
Play a simple Hide and Seek game. Tell your child where you’ve hidden something at home, and see if they can go and get it. Then, see if they can explain where they’ve hidden something for you to find.

Confidence

5. All About Me
Make an "All About Me Book". Together with your child, collect photos and drawings done by them to pop into a scrapbook. Start writing down a few of the special things that your child says that make you both laugh and put these into the book too. Add photos from when they were a baby and include photos of where they live as well as family, other important people and pets. Take some time to get the book out and look at it together. When you go away on holiday, collect things from your time away and put those into the book too.

Looking After Things

6. Pass The Teddy
Play “Pass The Teddy” - young children love to look after things that are special to them. Carefully pass the teddy or another special soft toy from person to person and when the music stops, the person holding him has to give the teddy an extra special hug.

7. Special Tea
Plan a special tea for each other and invite someone you know, or your child’s favourite toy. Make place names, and make sure there’s enough for everyone to eat and drink so that each guest feels really special.

8. Pass the Smile!
Play “pass the smile” – just take it in turns to smile at each other.

Win a FREE sample magazine

Waybuloo Magazine has developed an online game to mark the launch of the magazine. Simply play the Waybuloo online game, Flight of the Narabug, and enter your details – there are 5,000 free samples to give away.

The game is another way for children to extend their enjoyment of the series and magazine. Children can play with De Li and her ‘Narabug’, helping to collect strawberries to share with the other Piplings. In addition, the game will give young children the opportunity to learn to mark the launch of Waybuloo Magazine, the pre-school title based on the new CBeebies programme and the first magazine to help children learn about feelings, understand emotions and their impact on the world around them. and develop their computer skills.

About Waybuloo Magazine

Waybuloo is the first pre-school magazine to help children learn about feelings and understand emotions. Through their engagement with De Li, Nok Tok, Lau Lau and Yojojo (the ‘Piplings’) in the land of Nara, the magazine aims to help a child’s development in a number of ways:

• Feeling Good – helping children to understand how to care about themselves, their world and other people;
• Communication – having fun sharing stories, making choices, thinking and talking about feelings and emotions;
• Being Creative – confidently making things for themselves and others;
• Finding Out – discovering more about things in the natural world and learning to appreciate them;
• Physical Development – keeping fit and healthy with the Piplings, eating fruit & vegetables and trying yogo (a simple, gentle form of yoga).

About Stephanie Cooper:
Stephanie worked for 8 years in education specialising in the early years. She was a teacher in two London boroughs before becoming deputy head teacher of a large primary school in South London. After two years as an advisory teacher for literacy, she spent two further years writing books for parents as well as writing for magazines and newspapers. Stephanie is now Group Editor of BBC Pre-school magazines at BBC Worldwide.

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