Social Skills

At KIDS&Co. we care about children’s emotional and social development. Developing proper standards of behaviour is as important as learning to read and it’s never too early for children to learn social skills that will help them become valuable adults.

Children are taught how to recognize and name emotions, they also learn how to control them, when needed. By assigning tasks and evaluating the progress of their realization they learn cooperation and co-responsibility. Children’s interests and skills are developed during numerous developmental workshops (eurhythmics, movement exercises, art classes). We teach children independent thinking and discreetly guide them when they learn and acquire practical skills through educational projects and during frequent trips.

Preschoolers learn from a very young age how they can use their natural energy and potential to listen, focus, control their behaviour and have good relations with others. By the time they finish their preschool education, children are self-aware, emphatic and they can manage their behaviour. Shaping a child’s character and teaching them proper behaviour through everyday activities helps them develop relationships at home, in school and other communities.

Social development programme:

The following programme supports the proper emotional development of children; particular emphasis is placed on evoking in a child a sense of self-efficacy. It describes basic risks related to the children’s emotional development and provides brief instructions how to deal with them.

It’s very important to develop basic skills such as:

• self-esteem,
• curiosity,
• emotional independence.

They are crucial for the child’s development and learning. Research shows that self-esteem can influence not only the child’s but also the adult’s achievements.

The aim of education is to create open-minded, innovative and socialized individuals ready to integrate and cooperate with others. These traits, personality dispositions and attitudes are developed in the first years of education.

Experience shows that many children in kindergarten and school don’t fulfill their intellectual potential. Achievements are determined by both intelligence and children’s motivation to learn. Psychologists emphasize that the child’s cognitive abilities can be realized and developed only when their emotional and social development is undisturbed. This means that the teacher must be able to recognize different types of motivation and use this knowledge to improve the efficiency of educational work.

The teacher’s task is to provide educational opportunities that will help create personal, formal and community relationships, which will, eventually, evolve into empathy and pro-social attitudes.

The primary goal of the programme is to support all aspects of children’s harmonious development: emotional, mental, cognitive, social, linguistic and motor.

In the kindergarten environment it’s extremely important to maintain a proper balance between free play, in which the teacher does not interfere, and education, which should take place in the form of playing, experiencing and discovering. It’s equally significant to give the child an opportunity to express their own emotions and experiences spontaneously.

Another goal of the programme is to shape children’s own identity and ability to function in a group and teach them openness to other people. Three-year-old children learn and play alongside each other in the so-called parallel play. It is only the four-year-old that discovers the pleasure of acting and functioning in a kindergarten group, gradually acquiring the necessary social skills.

The programme also aims to interest children in other customs and cultures, not only the English-speaking ones, and to open their minds and encourage tolerance towards different races and religions. An equally important goal of the programme is to make children interested in studying and prepare them for the role of students, especially in bilingual schools.