Does your 5 year old want you to watch plays they’re putting on, listen to them sing, or watch them dance around? This is actually an important milestone for their Social-Emotional Learning (SEL).
Social-Emotional Learning is when your child uses their skills to form healthy identities, set and achieve their own goals, form and maintain healthy relationships, and make responsible decisions. When your child wants to showcase their new skills for you, this demonstrates their healthy development of trust towards you, their pride in themselves and their abilities, and their willingness to seek feedback or approval from you.
Here are some easy ways to support your child’s SEL with songs, dancing, and play-acting:
- Clap in a wildly excited manner when your child is finished with their performance. Your child just did something very brave: They made themselves vulnerable to criticism or to being made fun of. Yet they trusted you to safely appreciate their singing voice, their dance moves, their imagination. Reward their trust and Social-Emotional Learning with applause, praise, and encouragement. This helps to reinforce that you are a safe space and there to support them.
- Ask your child fun and supportive questions about their performance. This demonstrates your genuine interest in what they are interested in. This kind of support is thrilling for your child. For example, you could ask, “that was fantastic! How did you learn to sing so well?” or, “you did such an amazing job! How did you come up with those great ideas?”
- Sing or dance for your child, modeling that this trust runs both ways. Helping your child embrace silliness can actually provide a power-boost to their Social-Emotional Learning. Dancing, singing, and being silly together supports trust, the building of a safe space, embracing joy, and family bonding.
Storypod can support your child’s SEL with song, dance, and play-acting in the following ways:
Our interactive Audio Experiences use Social-Emotional Learning as a foundation. Crafties provide activities, songs, and dances for your child. Read-Along Audiobooks model activities like putting on plays. We provide a screen-free pathway to learning and growth.
Our Classic Fairytales Bundle and The Tortoise & the Hare Craftie model performative actions like acting out fables and fairytales. Our Ultimate Reading Bundle includes The Pink Stripy Pipefish (a read-along audiobook that demonstrates a shadow puppet show) Pumpkin's Fairytale (about choosing a role as something different), and Spike: The Penguin with Rainbow Hair (about finding yourself and performing as who you are), along with many more. Our Knowledge Crafties, like the Underwater Adventures Bundle, teach your child about different careers that they can act out.
Our Sleepi Sheep, Melodee Moose, Manu Monkey and Uma Unicorn Crafties offer hours of song and dance options for your child. Planetpals Read-Along Audiobook encourages them to sing along with the story. The Smurfs Phonics Collection: Long Vowel Books is full of singing and dancing. And don’t forget the iCraftie Owl, which offers 100 minutes of recordable audio that your child can play on their Storypod speaker again and again.
