Mental Health & Wellness at Head Start
Hello! My name is Alaijah Evans, and I am thrilled to be the School Social Worker here at Manchester Head Start. I have the wonderful opportunity to support our preschool students in their social and emotional development, helping them build skills that will serve as a strong foundation for their future learning. I look forward to working with your children and partnering with you to create a positive and nurturing environment where every student feels valued, understood, and ready to learn.
Building Social Skills in Young Children
At School Second Step
Our program uses Second Step as our social and emotional curriculum. Second Step is a research based program and it aligns with The Creative Curriculum for Preschool development and learning objectives. The program is designed to increase children's school readiness and social success by building their social-emotional competence and self-regulation skills. Staff have been trained to implement the curriculum. A Home Link activity is sent home weekly. These short activities give children a chance to practice skills at home with their families. Home Links also keep families informed about what their children are learning in the program.
At Home Activities
Social Skills are behaviors that promote positive interactions among people. Some examples of important social skills for young children are sharing, taking turns, cooperating, and communicating clearly.
Not surprisingly, children who have poor social skills often have a hard time getting along with other children. Fortunately, daily opportunities can be created to help stregthen these skills in children.
- Practicing social skills is a way to work on specific aspects of social interactions. For example, if you notice a child stands too close to peers or has difficulty getting a classmate's attention; help them learn about personal space or conversational skills through role play in the classroom, or at home. Create stories to help teach these skills.
- While reading books, ask children many questions about how the characters may be feeling and why. Ask the children what someone in the story could do to make a character feel better.
- Use puppets, dolls, stuffed animals, and play figurines as props to help demonstrate and teach social skills. You can use the props to help discuss frequent classroom issues or to help children discuss an individual problem.
- Set up play situations that give practice in turn-taking. Going to a restaurant, grocery store, or the movies are examples of activities in which we may have to wait in line.
Resources: CSEFEL-http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu
Pathways to Play, Heidemann, S. & Hewitt, D. (1992)
Social and Emotional Development, Riley, D., San Juan, R.R, Kliner, J., & Ramminger, A (2008)
The Behavioral and Mental Health Manager fulfills the following Head Start Performance Standards
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