Community Education - current class catalogs Families - Winter 2018-19 | Page 20

Development
Social and emotional development:
What’s it all about?
Monitoring your preschool child’s physical development
is easy as they grow taller, bigger, and stronger. However,
measuring your child’s social and emotional development
is not always as easy.
As your child’s first teacher, you can watch and monitor
whether they are developing skills appropriate for a three-
to four-year-old.
Social and emotional developmental milestones
Three years old:
• Mimics adults and friends
• Shows affection for friends without prompting
• Shows wide range of emotions
• Shares toys: takes turns with help
Four years old:
• More creative with make-believe play
• Initiates or joins in play with others; makes up games
• Notices the moods and/or feelings of others
Five years old:
• Wants to be like friends
• Likes to sing, dance, and act
• Can be demanding or cooperative
• Can tell the difference between real and make-believe
• Expresses anger with words rather than acting out
Encouraging social and emotional
development at home
As you begin to understand some of the social and
emotional skills your child is developing, the Anoka-
Hennepin Schools Preschool team suggests ways to
reinforce those skills.
In our preschool classrooms, children work in an
environment that may be more structured than they
are used to: staff work with them to develop good
behavior habits and cooperation. Our licensed
teaching staff monitor a child’s social and emotional
progress in many ways:
 bserving children as they play to note if a child
• O
plays next to peers, or with one or multiple peers.
• T
 hroughout the day, children’s ability to solve
social problems is observed.
• D
 uring story time, questions are asked about
the character’s feelings to see if children identify
and understand them.
• S
 elf-help assessments of children’s ability to take
care of their own needs appropriately.
• F
 ollowing a curriculum to support the social and
emotional development of children through
modeling with puppets and social picture cards.
Cause for concern?
• Play games to practice taking turns. Keep in mind that social and emotional skills do
not develop in exactly the same way or same time
frame for all preschool-age children. If you have
concerns, talk with your child’s pediatrician or
preschool teacher.
• Have play dates with peers that are the same age as
your child, and support them when a conflict happens. Stay connected and receive timely and topical
parent resource information.
• Have your child participate in a group activity such as
soccer, karate, or dance. ahschools.us/ecfetips
• A
 s you read books to your child, ask how the character
is feeling; how do you know; why do they feel that way?
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Promoting social and emotional growth
at preschool
Anoka-Hennepin Community Education I 763-506-1500