Social Skills
Developing social intelligence in children through social skills learning & practice
Learning and reinforcing social skills is at least as important as academic learning for children if not more. Mastery of social skills is highly essential for children of all ages as its benefits are foundational at the individual and collective levels. Social skills practice, equips a child with the intelligence, and tools to conduct oneself with self awareness, positive behavior & attitude, and a well grounded understanding of situations & others (their feelings & perspectives), thus greatly benefiting his academic performance & relationships, strengthening his influence, and sense of belonging in the classroom, school, community or society.
Our classes teach and reinforce social skills for children of all ages, with different levels of social understanding. We believe it is important to explicitly train all children with these skills that foster positive collaboration, beautiful friendships, conflict resolution, and negotiation skills among children in the classroom, at home, in the park or else. Further the mastery of these social skills over time creates benefits that follow students throughout their academic career, into the working world, and their future friendships & relationships.
Courses For 5-8 Years Old/Grades K-2
These courses emphasize core social skills like understanding expected and unexpected behaviors in various settings (classroom, playground, public spaces, home etc), following directions, naming and labeling emotions, zones of regulation, cooperative play, and friendship skills and more. Further, children develop foundational social intelligence – they recognize that each of us is different in many ways and that it is very important to accept and respect others and our own differences.
45 minutes per class – 8 classes per session
once a week for 8 weeks or twice a week for 4 weeks
Live Session Format: Here is a representative flow of the live class:
- Interactive, teacher driven lesson time using multimedia content – 10-15 minutes
- Hands on activities, exercises, games – 15-20 minutes
- Discussions, review and wrap up – 10 minutes
Social Skills in the Classroom
In this introductory class, children learn some of the essential skills to engage positively, to communicate & interact with peers, and navigate classroom expectations independently. We decode the dynamics of the classroom, the expectations & interactions in an easy to understand, and explicit manner and model expected behavior, using interactive & engaging play, games, activities, and examples.
Each class, children learn a social skill, and understand what is expected of them in various classroom situations and why, using illustrative scenario videos, discussions, social stories, games, and more. Following which they practice in the moment, through activities, play, and games & reinforce that learning
Our positive, fun, & welcoming classrooms invites children to conduct themselves freely, while learning positive coping skills and strategies to better navigate various classroom social contexts
Social Skills at Home and Beyond
The focus of this class is to help kids navigate situations at home, in the community and beyond. We learn about responsibilities, expectations, making good choices, negotiations, and more. From chores, to boundaries, to transitions, to new changes we bring many scenarios that children run into at home, discuss, and learn strategies to communicate how we feel, what we want, how to help and have fun with siblings, parents and other family members.
Children develop better understanding of relationships, themselves, and engage their thinking and problem solving skills as they solve social skill challenge exercises in class along with peers.
Children have a lot of fun and interaction in class, as they learn social skills while playing pretend & role play, board games, organized games, read social stories and make arts and crafts.
Our positive, fun, & welcoming classrooms invites children to conduct themselves freely, and to learn and reinforce expected behaviors in various social contexts at home and in public places.
Social Skills on the Playground
Play ground dynamics are complex with unstructured, and uncontrolled activity and unpredictability. It is an excellent place for children to apply and reinforce their social problem solving skills, and create a best experience for themselves and others. However it is highly beneficial when children are given an opportunity to pause, observe, and understand the dynamics of playground, discuss, and analyze best ways to respond.
In each class we bring a playground scenario, discuss whats going on, understand each kid’s wants and feelings, and the social rules, and expectations of situations, and learn ways to respond positively. Children learn friendship & negotiation skills, and strategies that result in fun, and positive interactions with peers.
Children engage in various small group play and activities as they learn social skills, and put them into practice during the class.
Executive Functioning - Staying on Task
The focus of this introductory executive functioning skills is to promote behaviors. and practices that help young children manage their distractions and stay on the task at hand. Little children need a lot of help channeling their curiosity and distractions, in order to complete their tasks at home and in class. Further their ability to focus and stay on one thing is very important in sustaining play and friendships, and to have a fulfilling experience of the activity at hand.
Children learn many visual, sensory, and mindfulness strategies like using timers, schedules, reminders, stress balls, mindful breathing, and brain breaks to handle distractions and stay focused on what they are doing. Children practice and reinforce this foundational skill in many ways through exercises, group games, and activities in class.
Children experience fulfillment in performing tasks, and develop confidence in their ability to complete a task as they engage in many fun and interactive executive functioning activities in class.
Courses For 8-11 Years Old/Grades 3-5
Children delve into conversations, collaborations, friendships, fair play, social interactions, sustaining attention & focus, and autonomy in the intermediate and upper elementary social skills courses. We create a safe, positive, engaging, & interactive space, decode highly relevant social scenarios for children of all levels of social intelligence, and facilitate in the moment social skills learning, practice, and reinforcement.
55 minutes per class – 8 classes per session
Once a week for 8 weeks or twice a week for 4 weeks
Live Session Format: Here is a representative flow of the live class:
- Interactive teacher led lesson introducing problems, strategies & methods -10-15 minutes
- Hands on activities, exercises, games – 20 – 30 minutes
- Discussions, review and wrap up – 10 -15 minutes
Working together in the classroom
Children are expected to work in groups in a variety of activities, in classrooms beginning from grade3. Consequently children’s learning outcomes become heavily dependent on their communication, assertiveness, and ease of interactions when working in a group. This class focuses on social skills required for working effectively in a small group – helping children understand and accept that each of us can have different views, opinion and ideas about how to solve the problem at hand.
Further they learn strategies for finding common ground, articulating their ideas, paying attention, staying assertive, laying ground rules, contributing fairly, and advocating for fairness for themselves and others.
We make social skills learning and practice, fun and engaging ,by bringing stories and scenarios that are very relevant to children and engaging them through play, organized games, art and craft & other activities, and stories. By creating a highly positive, and collaborative group learning atmosphere, we motivate children to seek out peers, and to work in teams effectively in classrooms and beyond.
Navigating Social Situations
As children grow older, they engage in a variety of interactions with people outside their circle of friends and family. The emphasis of this class is to help students engage, and interact in ways that best serve their purpose, while keeping the interactions positive, productive, stress free, and safe.
We discuss common interactions at stores, restaurants, airports, hospitals, administrative offices, social media and other online interactions, distant relatives and more – we decode expectations, rules, and strategies for children, so they feel more confident, safe, and comfortable going into such situations and learn the relevant life skills.
The format of the class is highly interactive and engaging, with many group activities, where children have fun, while learning implicitly.
Making and Keeping Friends
Making friends and playing with friends is perhaps what every child wants, and longs for the most. However making friends and keeping friendships is not that easy always, it requires work and practice. The focus of this class is to help children build and sustain lasting friendships by learning conversational skills, cooperative play skills, and developing empathy, self awareness,and situational awareness.
They learn to recognize and deal with bullying. In this fun and interactive class, children learn and practice social skills like joining in play, initiating conversations, making connections, being flexible,
playing fairly, negotiating, resolving conflicts and so on skills that foster strong friendships. We use a lot of probing questions and activities to encourage children to bring their own friendships and challenges to class and shared what worked best for them and how they can work through any challenges.
Executive Functioning - Sustaining Attention & Focus
Children learn strategies, tools, and engage in exercises that emphasize attention and focus – so they can stay on a task with focus and attention from beginning to end. Further children learn advanced strategies like planning, prioritizing and managing distractions, which further strengthen their ability to complete work, and handle tasks independently with little help from adults.
Children play group games, and perform multi-step group and individual activities in each class engaging their working memory, focus, organization and planning skills and applying strategies to manage distractions and stress. We draw from activities, games, and projects from their immediate context and engage children’s executive functioning skills in a fun, and interactive atmosphere.
Courses For 11-14 Years Old/Grades 6-8
Children delve into conversations, collaborations, friendships, fair play, social interactions, sustaining attention & focus, and autonomy in the intermediate and upper elementary social skills courses. We create a safe, positive, engaging, & interactive space, decode highly relevant social scenarios for children of all levels of social intelligence, and facilitate in the moment social skills learning, practice, and reinforcement.
55 minutes per class – 8 classes per session
Once a week for 8 weeks or twice a week for 4 weeks
Live Session Format: Here is a representative flow of the live class:
- Interactive teacher led lesson introducing problems, strategies & methods -10-15 minutes
- Hands on activities, exercises, games – 20 – 30 minutes
- Discussions, review and wrap up – 10 -15 minutes
Working in Teams
Middle schoolers must often work in teams inside and outside of classrooms and play grounds as part of group projects in school, or team sports. We focus on teamwork in this class – guiding youngsters to navigate team dynamics, and how to become a good team player, who knows how to lead and follow as needed.
We create an open, and interactive platform where we discuss teams & team work, bringing in many stories from our own personal experiences and the famous stories of our favorite teams. We study teams, understand the importance of self awareness, mindfulness, and empathy for building a strong team.
We engage youngsters in impromptu team building activities, rotating leadership roles in class. At an individual level, students practice self awareness, mindfulness, and self management strategies to become a better team player.
We learn and practice team playing strategies, engage in free flow team activities and projects in class, and reflect on results and experiences. Youngsters find this class quite interesting and helpful as we explore challenges very relevant to them with a positive and open attitude, and ease having loads of fun along the way as we team up
Self Awareness & Advocacy
As youngsters step up into increasingly active roles and take on more responsibilities, and make autonomous choices, it becomes imperative for them to become self aware, and advocate for themselves assertively in order to successfully handle (navigate) social challenges. In this class, students learn and practice many self awareness, self reflection, assertion, and self advocacy strategies & methods, in a hands-on manner using their own experiences and stories.
When youngsters are self aware, they become better equipped to deal with bullying, favortism, unconscious bias, and prejudice, and advocate for themselves. Such an engagement instills confidence and trust in young people about their ability to move forward inspite of adversity, and be able to influence and become a catalyst for change.
Students perceive the tools and strategies they learn in this class to be highly beneficial, and their class experience as empowering and enriching.
Perspective Taking
Being able to understand or at least consider someone else’s perspective is an important social inference skill in a variety of scenarios. Perspective taking is a complex social skill, that requires quite a bit of practice to get good at. In this class, we invite tweens and teens to step out of their own worlds into a dimension of thinking that is beyond their own self and understand other people’s perspective.
Social perspective taking helps us make meaning of people as they interact or coexist together in specific contexts; Youngsters feel an increased sense of connection and belonging as they understand individual and collective perspectives.
We bring real and fictional stories, subjects, experiences, and situations, and discuss & understand the characters, their actions and motives by constantly putting ourselves in others situations (shoes) thus enriching our own perspectives, and understanding others (perspectives), developing empathy, social inference, and problem solving skills along the way.
Youngsters find this class highly engaging and refreshing, as they discuss and debate situations, engage in interesting exercises through play and activities, in our fun, interactive, open, and positive classrooms.
Executive Functioning - Planning, Priorities & Organzation
This course focuses on strengthening core executing functioning skills like organization, planning and prioritizing, prospective and working memory, mental flexibility, sustaining attention and focus, personal independence and problem solving. Learning executive functioning tools, strategies and practicing, is highly critical for youngsters to assert their independence with little stress and anxiety.
Middle schoolers engage in individual and group exercises and activities related to one or more executive functioning skill in each class. Further students learn how they can apply these strategies to handle everyday tasks such as chores, school homework, sports or outside school activities, and personal recreation needs in a balanced manner.
As youngsters learn, improve, and apply their executive functioning skills they become more confident, and perceive a renewed sense of enthusiasm, ease, and accomplishment
8 Classes - 4 Weeks Session $49.99/-
Courses For 14 Plus Years Old/Grades 9 & Above
Children delve into conversations, collaborations, friendships, fair play, social interactions, sustaining attention & focus, and autonomy in the intermediate and upper elementary social skills courses. We create a safe, positive, engaging, & interactive space, decode highly relevant social scenarios for children of all levels of social intelligence, and facilitate in the moment social skills learning, practice, and reinforcement.
55 minutes per class – 8 classes per session
Once a week for 8 weeks or twice a week for 4 weeks
Live Session Format: Here is a representative flow of the live class:
- Interactive teacher led lesson introducing problems, strategies & methods -10-15 minutes
- Hands on activities, exercises, games – 20 – 30 minutes
- Discussions, review and wrap up – 10 -15 minutes
High School Social Group
The intent and focus of this class is to help navigate the social, and emotional challenges, and stressors of high school life. This is a platform for young adolescents to share their pressing thoughts, passions, views, personal values, ideas, and talk about academics, school, friendships, career plans and more.
We work on stress and anxiety management strategies by bringing in self awareness and mindfulness practices. Each class we learn social skills like conflict resolution, dealing with bias, bullying, setting goals, managing expectations and more.
We engage in discussions, activities, games, and debates while learning and practicing social skills. Young people draw important lifeskill learning, stress and anxiety relief and incredible support in this group. Our highly trained instructors are experts at channeling youthful energy for creating positive and innovative spaces that offer support and ideas.
Advocating for Self & Others with Awareness
The emphasis of this course is two fold – to understand and manage self, and to advocate for one self. To put one self out there, to have people listen to you, to bring all of yourself to the present moment takes practice and learning strategies for all youngsters, and adults as well.
In this advanced social skills class, high schoolers learn social thinking strategies, assertiveness, and practice self awareness and self advocacy, through various group activities that are highly relatable to the kind of tasks and responsibilities they would handle in high school. As youngsters practice self awareness, management, & advocacy hands on in class, they realize how this can help solve many of their personal challenges and conduct oneself with ease. Students walk away from this class feeling heard, supported, and empowered to take on the small and big challenges they encounter in life with ease.
Perspective Taking & Empathy
Practicing perspective taking explicitly can be highly beneficial for high schoolers in enriching their creativity, design thinking, empathy, and social inferencing skills and expanding their own perspectives and world of possibilities.
In this class young people engage their perspective taking skills on a variety of issues – those that have an immediate relevance to them as well as those that impact them at a higher level. Youngsters perceive an increased sense of connection, and belonging as they understand individual and collective perspectives and context.
Students engage in various open ended group activities, and discussions related to perspective taking and empathy in class, and learn strategies and develop deeper social understanding. Young people find the strategies they learnt and the practices they build here to be highly helpful for working with systems, and people in high school and beyond.
Executive Functioning - Managing Time, Stress, & Anxiety
This course focuses on strengthening core executing functioning skills like organization, planning and prioritizing, prospective and working memory, mental flexibility, sustaining attention and focus, personal independence and problem solving. Learning executive functioning tools, strategies and practicing, is highly critical for youngsters to assert their independence with little stress and anxiety.
Middle schoolers engage in individual and group exercises and activities related to one or more executive functioning skill in each class. Further students learn how they can apply these strategies to handle everyday tasks such as chores, school homework, sports or outside school activities, and personal recreation needs in a balanced manner.
As youngsters learn, improve, and apply their executive functioning skills they become more confident, and perceive a renewed sense of enthusiasm, ease, and accomplishment
