Preschool Activities that Meet Social Emotional Standards

It's Wednesday, which means it's time for some activities aligned to a specific standard.  This is the fifth week of this feature, and we're still on social emotional standards. (The Standards that I use every day, and am most comfortable with are Ohio's Early Learning Development Standards - you can review them here, however I've found that even if your State's standards differ, many of these activities can still be aligned similarly). Here we go!

Domain: Social Emotional Development
Strand: Relationships
Topic: Attachment

Attachment is healthy, we want children to feel attachment to parental figures, and to want their parents near them.  We also want young children to feel safe and comfortable at school, so that they can separate easily from parents and familiar adults and feel confident that these adults will come back for them at the end of the day.  Many times it becomes the teacher's job to guide parents through these transitions so that drop offs are successful for everyone involved.  Here are some great ways to help parents and children settle into a drop off routine that will help start the day off right.  

Create a family album necklace for children to put on whenever they need it. From MooMah

Create a space for family photos and add photos of the children together too, because they are each others' "School Family".  From The Curious Kindergarten

Create a reading space that can accommodate parents and children so that they can read a story together at the beginning of the day (or before going home).  Photo from Your Teacher's Aid.

Parent/child journals - parents can write little messages to their children and children can respond throughout the day with drawings. This is also a great way to organize all of those random pictures that get drawn for parents.  From Camp Kurtz. 

It can also help if teachers have a special activity that will draw children's attention during drop off.  They will be so excited about the activity, and distraction can work wonders for separation anxiety. 

Check back next week, I'll be sharing ideas for building relationships with familiar adults!