Hello Friends!
Raising peer awareness/increasing social skill is something to work on with your kiddos all year long. Summertime provides opportunities for this, especially with kids who are enrolled in summer camp/programs. In fact, social skills are often challenged here, as your kids are learning lots of brand new faces and names in a small amount of time and all at once! Soooo ... what a great time to implement some summer social activities that will aid this. This may even be helpful to begin working on a couple weeks prior to the start of school.
I really like a lot of the Pancake Manor songs (their sound is easy and enjoyable for all). I have included two video versions of the same song below. I find that some of my clients who demonstrate shyness or social withdrawal/disinterest/sensitivity(especially kids on the ASD spectrum), benefit from this method.
METHOD: With these clients, I will sometimes implement a peer awareness activity first using names paired with animal or fictional/cartoon characters. I find that these clients are often more accepting of and willing to give visual attention/participation with animal/character pictures over pictures of actual people faces. This is a "meet the child where they are" type of method. Once your child is comfortable with this, begin to transition into using actual peer faces. Depending on how sensitive your child is in this area, you may want to transition with one of the methods listed below:
- Transition to peer faces by only adding in one peer face with each repetition of the song, keeping the rest of the song/activity the same as originally introduced (with animal/character pics).
- Transitioning with peer faces, but have them more cartoon based ... then move little by little to actual face pics.
- Transition by implementing 1 actual peer face (your child's actual peer) at a time. This is if you are trying to work on specific peers in your child's life (neighbors, campers, family members, familiar persons, classmates, etc).
The Name Song by: Pancake Manor
(song version with animals/characters)
The Name Song by: Pancake Manor (song version with peer faces)
Have fun!
Jessica
