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While children think they are just participating in a fun activity with their siblings, parents, teachers or peers, they are actually learning critical social emotional skills that they will need throughout their lives. The activities mentioned below all aid in social and emotional development as well as cognitive development. Cognitively, the activities will help children to better identify what emotions or feelings they are experiencing in their everyday lives because they will be familiar with emotion language and vocabulary, therefore improving the development of their emotional intelligence. It is important for children to have emotional intelligence because when a child is in a very heightened state of emotion, they cannot learn effectively; and so, when a child can identify their emotions and allow the feelings to come and go because they have the emotional intelligence to do so, they are still able to learn. Social Emotional Learning can have long term benefits to a child's mental health and well-being, because they know healthy ways to identify, understand, and express their emotions. Engaging in activities like those that follow provides practice for children to express and manage their feelings, and teaches children to accept how they are feeling.

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Why do children need to develop socially and emotionally?

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Why do children need to develop socially and emotionally?

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When a child learns and is able to identify their feelings, understand the feeling, and express it, they are less likely to utilize negative coping strategies that can lead to mental health concerns such as depression and anxiety, which is why SEL is so important to a child's well-being. In addition, when a child can identify their emotions, they develop self-awareness, and can identify what calms them when they experience certain emotions. Without the ability to be self-aware, children cannot overcome their emotions and learn to self-regulate and have self-control, meaning their emotions can overwhelm them and cause children to act irrationally. As children develop, the areas of the brain responsible for emotional reactivity are forming connections to other parts of the brain like the frontal cortex which is responsible for decision making, meaning it is very valuable for parents to help their children to know how to use these new interconnections to manage their emotions. SEL is also important because it is responsible for the components of intelligence, which are the desire to explore, self-control, creativity, verbal communication, and interpreting nonverbal communication. The desire to explore is how children are able to learn through their environments, self-control is how emotionally reactive children can regulate their emotions, creativity assists with risk taking, verbal communication allows children to communicate what they are feeling, and interpreting non-verbal communication is the ability for children to read others and know how they are feeling by gestures and facial expressions. All of these components are the ingredients of intelligence which are developed from social emotional learning. Another reason why SEL is important is because preschoolers who have emotional understandings can distract themselves when they are upset and handle their own feelings leading to less behavioral problems and better students for kindergarten.

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In this game or school station, children can read a story of an emotion and match the story to the puppet that corresponds to the emotion they read about. This game provides more practice of identifying emotions and what they may look like, aiding in the development of emotional intelligence. During the game, the parents or teachers can talk with the children about the different feelings or emotions present in the story, and the caregiver can provide a short connection with when they too had felt that emotion. After this, the child can also talk about any connections they may have to the emotions describes in the story.

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The book "I'm NOT just a Scribble" has many illustrations of scribble characters that want to feel included. At this station, the kids will be read or can read themselves the book, and then make their own scribble characters for the different emotions. After the characters are made, the parents or teachers can talk with the children about what faces might look like during the different emotions, and what sounds go with each feeling. Like for example, maybe tears come with a face that is sad, and the sound of crying goes with sadness as well. This teaches children how to better identify emotions and be aware of how others may be feeling.

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For this puzzle game, children will identify a mood or emotion and find the matching emoji that represents that emotion. This puzzle is a great way for children to recognize what certain feelings may look like so they can better identify emotions in real world scenarios, as well as their own. Parents or teachers can help further develop a child's emotional intelligence during this activity by talking about their feelings, such as what they may like or dislike and why, which will also develop their emotional vocabularies.

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1. Parents should balance social play (aids with social independence and imaginations) with solitary play experiences (balance your child’s lives)

2. Make reading books imaginative

3. Provide patient encouragement and advice on how to succeed

4. Limit screen time and spend time together as a family to promote social development

5. Provide support for managing emotions and teach them how to manage their emotions themselves

6. Help your child understand why they are upset

7. Ask your child why they are feeling the emotion they're feeling and provide reasoning on how to overcome the emotion (this will help them to learn why they have a particular feeling and deal with situations that may arise)

8. Create child-rearing environments that recognize each child's temperament and encourage adaptive functioning (if a household has more than one child, parents must recognize that each child is different and has their own temperament)

9. Remain positive and sensitive to your children while providing clear expectations and limits for children that are emotionally reactive

10. Label emotions and explain to your child what each emotion entails (the more emotion words kids know will help them to develop their emotional understandings)

11. Play with your child (when children engage with other kids through play, they are developing socially and learning how to deal with conflict)

12. Frequently describe your emotions to you child (they will feel comfortable talking about their emotions too)

13. Read with your child (certain books can improve a child's social emotional awareness because they can learn to sympathize with characters (Yahya))

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Like most areas of child development, choosing the correct children's book to read to your child improves social emotional learning. In a study designed to provide educational suggestions for establishing social and emotional skills through children’s literature, it was found that the literary aspects most important to social emotional learning are the variation of genres, plots, and characters, and the promotion of a particular social emotional category. By focusing on teaching one social emotional concept or lesson in each reading, children will learn a more in depth understanding and have more time to practice identifying one emotion. Books designed to develop SEL in children should present dynamic characters that have challenges, strong characters that overcome difficulties, characters that learn lessons throughout the book, and characters that are treated as heroes and role models. In the study, some of the most effective books established different perspectives and taught children the ability to empathize with others, an ability vital to emotional intelligence (Yahya).

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1. Parents need to balance informal conversation with their children and the language that is used at school to enhance their success at school

2. Parents need to encourage dual representation activities like make-believe play so they can develop their imaginations

3. Let your child have their own autonomy and independence, but also responsibilities through independent activities around the house (making their beds in the mornings)

4. Have your child play in nature because it helps them relax, think more clearly, and stops nature deficits (go for a walk and a hike, gardening, water play)

5. Parents should encourage their children to participate in arts and crafts activities because it allows them to be creative and learn trial and error

6. Balance the isolation of technology with real life experiences with real people