Social behaviour focuses on training the child on how to behave in social situations and on school premises.
The child has to be trained to focus on learning certain aspects, such as managing personal hygiene, maintaining social communication, having proper classroom behaviours, good manners and good habits and more.
In order to achieve these goals, the child should be taught the basic etiquette that allows learning to happen.
- To make them learn how to sit appropriately at a table
- To increase sitting tolerance in the classroom
- To maintain a good sitting posture
- Social behaviour (includes good manners and habits)
The school readiness program focuses on improving the foundation skills of learning in children. The acadimics section of school readiness program includes activities related to literacy skills, such as pre-reading, pre-writing and pre-math skills.
Pre-reading skills can be taught by developing phonemic awareness, teaching the association of speech sounds and letter sounds, using phonemic knowledge to build words and deciding which words to use. The materials such as movable alphabets, language mats and objects, and picture cards are used to improve these skills.
Pre-writing skills are the skills that are needed for a child to write legibly and controllably. Before a child begins to write, there are some important aspects that need attention such as:
- Gross motor control
- Fine motor control
- Eye-hand coordination
- Good posture / Core control
- Midline crossing
- Bilateral coordination
- Good pencil grip
- Ability to form basic patterns
Pre-math concepts like comparing between big and small, wide and narrow, thick and thin, long and short, and so on are taught during this program. Such real-life comparisons make children understand the concepts and learn more. This program helps them to have the ability to recognize numerals, understand shape, size, and patterns, to count the numbers verbally, identify more or less of the quantity, and understand the concepts in comparison to the existing ones, i.e., concrete to abstract thinking.
The art and craft activities are introduced to train the child in sensory skills. These sensory play activities include touching, pinching, pasting, pouring, sorting, picking, and moving actions. As a preschooler would often use their hands to touch and pick things to do activities like drawing and colouring, their eye-hand coordination, fine motor skills, and sitting tolerance will improve.
These craft activities include the usage of things ranging from soft to rough textures that enable a child to explore. Using things like paints, brushes, marbles, sand, salt, beads, dice, colours, and so on, we focus on improving the fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination of the child. These are later helpful in doing tasks such as buttoning or unbuttoning the shirts, tying or untying the shoelaces, and zipping and unzipping the jackets, along with improving writing skills. The gripping of a pen or pencil while writing and controlling its movement in a structured way would also be possible with this training.
Activities of daily living include brushing, bathing, toileting, dressing, and eating. These self-help skills are needed for any child to be independent in daily living. Learning such skills before going to school enables the child to articulate their needs with the helper or the teacher at school.
Children need to be trained in all the essential activities that are needed in daily living. For example, if the child is not toilet-trained, he doesn't know how to respond in class if he has such a necessity. If he happens to pee in the classroom, it will bring shame and embarrassment for the child too. The child would face difficulties in expressing and cannot cope with such emotional issues. Unwanted behaviours would sprout during such situations, which might make the child violent. All these chains of events can be avoided when such ADLs are taken care of.
The initial thought of having an idea results in an attempt to express it. Communication is possible when one can articulate such thoughts. Articulation is the process of expressing our thoughts through speech. In order to speak about their ideas or thoughts, it is necessary to have language. Children who cannot express their thoughts can become frustrated and develop various unwanted behaviours.
Articulation refers to making sounds using voice or words. A child needs to articulate their thoughts in communication. At the same time, whatever a child can feel and express should be put up in words without losing its meaning. Hence they should be trained to express their wants and needs appropriately. The school-readiness program helps in this process.
Communicating with peers, teachers and strangers is important for a school-going child. Hence the skills necessary for communication, such as speaking words or or learning to speak first-words, sentence formation, articulation, and so on, are focused on in this training program.
The children might have separation anxiety being away from their parents for a while at school. So, teaching them to interact with peers and make friends is important for coping with their emotions.
Socializing with known people and also with strangers, peers, and teachers is important for a school-going child. Hence the skills necessary for social communication, such as body language, eye contact, facial expressions, social competence, social reasoning, greeting others, calling someone and responding, and so on, are focused on in this training program.
