Parents have learned to enhance social and literacy development in Rosella’s book. But beyond this material, how else can they be assured that their children learn to grow socially and emotionally.
Parents initially focus on making their children excel in academics and extracurricular activities. They send them to school and after-class tutorials, get them to join summer classes, and some parents even force their children to spend grueling hours on activities they don’t necessarily resonate with.
More commonly than they would acknowledge, parents equate their children’s proficiency in these facets with brilliance and success, not only on the latter’s capabilities but also on how they’ve nurtured them. Parents tend to overvalue these aspects in their children’s development that activities they believe don’t benefit them are disregarded, failing to oversee that there are more important aspects that influence their growth and development.
Beyond Physical and Mental Development
Children are born with a clean slate. Void of any mental capacity on their own, children rely on their experiences to build and establish their sense of self. It’s up to their environment and the people surrounding them to model and influence their growth and development. In her book, author Rosella Calauti emphasizes that children’s development doesn’t only rely on the physical and mental aspects. Parents begin to comprehend how important it is to encourage and enhance social and literacy development in Rosella’s book. Therefore, it’s only crucial that parents pay attention to their children’s social and emotional development beyond their physical and mental development.
Social development helps the child’s ability to interact and form relationships with others. At the same time, emotional development revolves around regulating and expressing emotions. Social-emotional development helps in building and maintaining great friendships through problem-solving, making intelligent decisions, and having a necessary level of self-awareness.
Additionally, social-emotional development influences children’s ability to create meaningful connections. It can also lead to academic success. According to the National Academy of Sciences, children need the motivation to learn, intellectual skills, and social-emotional development to be ready and excel in school.
Social-Emotional Skills and How They’re Developed
While the academe focuses on improving children’s intellectual competency, this doesn’t limit its influence on children’s social-emotional skills development. There are school activities established to sharpen their cognitive capacities, which at the same time also inconspicuously impact their social-emotional development. A few of such activities include:
Social-Emotional Learning Focused Curriculum
As with any cognitive activity, a teacher’s guidance is essential to their students’ social-emotional development. This means teachers need to involve themselves in propagating this concept to their students proactively. For instance, some teachers ask their students to write anything in a journal as a typical grounding activity during homeroom periods. This is a common task across many school boards that teachers might overlook influences the children’s social-emotional development depending on what they do afterward. If teachers only collect what the students write, it is a simple writing activity. But if they invite their students to share, react and give their opinions on what their friends wrote, it can be a great exercise to strengthen their social-emotional learning.
Simple modifications and improvements of simple and common activities, such as in this example, can be an excellent way for students to learn. As long as the activity is centered on developing empathy and acts as an opportunity for students to socialize more, it’s an excellent means for social-emotional development.
Role Playing
This is a typical “theatrical” activity that both the students and teachers enjoy. The latter commonly ask their students to role play as a part of their English classes or as a fun activity to help reinforce the lesson. Students act out different scenarios in the activity depending on how they understand and perceive the situation. If teachers end the activity there and explain the lesson, it’s as simple as a demonstration. However, suppose the teacher encourages reflection afterward. This gives the students the chance to understand their choices and behaviors’ value and impact on specific scenarios.
To learn more activities that can help enhance children’s social-emotional development, parents can seek guidance in Rosella Calauti’s book. They can learn more about it and her belief regarding children’s development on her website: https://www.calauti.com/, or purchase her book on Amazon.