Social Skills for Kids

I received an advance readers copy in exchange for an honest review.
This book is probably appropriate for educators and parents of neurotypical children, as well as therapists and social workers in a mainstream setting, Not so much for kids on the spectrum or with severe emotional attachment concerns. Very good for what it is

I would like to thank NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this ebook.

Social Skills for Kids by Keri K. Powers is a wonderful guide to parents everywhere who are looking into developing their kids' social skills. Especially during this pandemic where normal human interactions are not easy.
My daughter is 18 months now and I have found quite a few good activities to engage her in. There were more brilliant activities and ideas for 1+ year old kids which I have noted down. I cannot wait to try them all.

As a school counselor who already owns a multitude of resources from Counselor Keri, I was very excited to receive an ARC of this title, and I was not disappointed.

Although it seems as though this book is written more for parents than for educators, I think there were plenty of tools educators could use as well. Many things I am already doing, but I was given a lot of new ideas as well as some ways to tweak what I already do. I think this would also be a great resource I could recommend to parents who ask for help with their children who struggle with social skills.

I pre-ordered a physical copy of this book within the first few chapters, as I knew I would want a physical copy for my school counseling office. Although I found some of the age ranges a bit off for a few of the activities (more for those that require reading or writing), I know I can pretty easily modify for my students' skills and abilities. For that reason, I appreciated the broad range of instructions and activities for each skill. The organization of the book (broken down into various areas) was really great too. I know if I have a student who specifically struggles with empathy skills, I can look at that section for some inspiration on strategies that student and I can do together.

I think this book is very helpful to parents, my son has a few "issues" and this book has helped him some. It may not be right for every parent or child but it's definitely worth a look.

While this book may be directed towards parents or adults living with children, as a teacher, I loved this book and would like to buy a copy for reference. Below are a couple of great aspects of this book.

First, there’s the organization of the book. Each chapter included an overview of the topic (ex. Active listening, communication, empathy, self-control, etc), in which the author describes the goals and mindsets aligned with each key term. Then, the author goes through the when, how, and why of the topic (which I found very helpful for providing context or rationale for older students/children learning about these strategies). And then there are the actual strategies! The target age for each strategy varies. This book would be most beneficial for grades PreK - 5th grade, but there were strategies that you can mature by changing terms and scenarios. Some of this book and the recommendations are formulaic, but this is something that I respect and like since it keeps things consistent and more memorable (ex. IDEAL method). Highly recommend to educators and families!

This book is such a brilliant tool for parents and teachers. In each chapter you can find a short introduction to the skill presented (active-listening, self-control, cooperation, problem-solving, empathy etc) followed by activities for different age range. These are well structured and give easy instructions to follow. I loved the questions section (“thinking back and lokkins ahead”) at the end of each activity.

This book gives some great games and activities to teach young children (and even older children, especially those with mild to moderate special needs) a variety of intrapersonal skills. It does a good job of summarizing everything needed to know for the activity in one to two pages so that you can scan and go, but also gives a good body of information of the specific skills taught and discussion points to follow-up with to cement the skill.

I love how this book gets straight to the point. There’s not a lot of introduction or explanations on what social skills are. Just lots of different activities for different ages to work on motor skills, cooperative play, empathy and much more.

Great book on how to encourage development of social skills in kids! The book begins with background into on what social skills are and why they are necessary. Then the bulk of the book is in chapters on different types of skills - communication, listening, cooperation, responsibility, empathy, engagement, self-control, emotion-regulation, problem-solving, and respect. Each of those skill chapters includes a definition, examples of the skill, how to explain it to kids, why it is important, where kids will use it, and then a bunch of acivities. Each activity is then shown with an appropriate age range, skills it works on, materials needed, number of participants, and where to play (inside, outside, video chat, or multiple options of these). How to play the activity is described, and then thinking back/looking ahead questions (either for the caregivers of the youngest kids, or questions to ask older kids about their experience with the activity). The book ends with a section on how to incorporate the skills into daily life.
This book has so much great information and ideas, and I love that the activities are separated by age and also that they are fairly simple but impactful. I would recommend this to other parents or caregivers looking to develop their children's social skills.

"Social Skills for Kids" describes fun activities that teach social skills like active listening, understanding body language, and effective communication. The author started by explaining what social skills are usually present at different ages. She then described some activities suitable for young kids (3+) and worked up to activities for progressively older kids (6- or 7-year-olds). There were also a few things suggested that you can do with 1-2-year-olds to help them develop. There were activities like teaching how loud to talk in different situations, using descriptive language, and giving affective instructions to someone else. For each activity, the author explained the purpose, targeted age, how many people were needed, how to do the activity, and some questions to ask afterward to help the child process what they learned. The directions were easy to understand. These activities were either fun games or interesting activities that kids will probably be willing to try and aren't too tricky to do. Overall, I'd recommend this book to people wanting creative ways to teach social skills.

This book was quite helpful, it offers activities and tips for parents and is easy to read. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a gifted copy. This is my honest review.