You can learn more about social development by playing games as a child then you will probably ever learn as an adult. The intrinsic ability that children have to learn by observation is remarkable, but it needs to be nurtured in the correct manner. Teaching resources will provide your children with the knowledge that they need but there are some things, like sharing and cooperating, which they will only learn by experiencing them. This article will consider some of the ways you can encourage joint play between your children and their friends to impart these skills:
Get a Seesaw
A seesaw literally will not work without cooperation. This is a great way to introduce the idea of sharing and cooperating because it will enable you to physically demonstrate how sharing can be beneficial to everyone.
Car Wash
Setting up a car wash is a great way to teach children to cooperate in different roles and help them gain an understanding of money at the same time. It will need to be heavily supervised for the sake of safety, as well as to protect the cars, but it is a great way to teach children about real-life roles. Get the children to decide who should do what. Get them to work together to collect money, wash the cars and make signs to advertise what they are doing.
Relay Racing
Relays are a great way of getting children to work together to achieve a common goal. Setting up an obstacle course and getting kids to cross a distance collaboratively will help to demonstrate that numerous contributions to the same goal will make it easier to achieve.
Cups on Strings
Cups on Strings is a great game which is similar to a relay race. The idea is to establish a course (usually between trees) of cups with strings through their handles. The cup needs to be able to move along the string but be directionally restricted by it. Obstacles should also be placed in the way to make it difficult to keep the cup steady. The first cup is filled with water at the start and this then has to be carried along the string and poured into the second cup, and so on. The aim is to get as much water as possible to the other end where it is then poured into a bucket. This is a great way to have fun on a hot day and it very clearly illustrates the need for teamwork.
Trace a Mate
Get one child to lie down on a big piece of paper and get another child to draw around them. The children can then fill in the details like the face and clothes with art supplies. Repeat the process for the second child and then display them together. You can then point out that neither one would have been able to complete such an activity by themselves.
Acting Skills
Children learn a lot from role-play games. They learn new words which are appropriate to certain situations and they learn to innovate by substituting items which they do not have with others. Role-playing as a cook and waitress, for example, will allow for children to conceptualise the different processes involved in the running of a restaurant.
Business Development
Encourage children to set up a pretend zoo or café. Participate by visiting the business and getting them to treat you like a customer. This will help them to develop a better vocabulary and importantly help them to understand how to behave in different circumstances. If you give them money (probably fake money) to enter the business then you can also teach them about bills and taxes by pretending to be a tax collector and taking small amounts of it back.
