Helping preschoolers develop social and emotional skills is one of the most important investments we can make in their future. These skills shape how they interact with others and influence their ability to manage emotions, communicate effectively and build lasting relationships.
Let’s take a look at how you can help preschoolers build these essential skills!
What Are Social and Emotional Skills?
Social and emotional skills are the tools we use to understand, manage and express emotions, as well as to build and maintain relationships. They include a range of abilities such as empathy, cooperation, self-regulation, active listening and conflict resolution.
“Children’s social and emotional health affects their overall development and learning. Research indicates that children who are mentally healthy tend to be happier, show greater motivation to learn, have a more positive attitude toward school, more eagerly participate in class activities, and demonstrate higher academic performance than less mentally healthy peers,” according to the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
For preschoolers, learning these skills helps them better engage with their peers, adapt to group settings and cope with challenges. These skills also promote confidence and independence, setting children up for future success both academically and socially.
Why Preschool Is a Great Place to Work on Social and Emotional Skills
Preschool is an ideal environment for fostering social and emotional development! Here’s why:
- Natural Social Settings: Preschools offer plenty of group interactions, enabling children to practice and refine their skills in real time.
- Structured Activities: Teachers incorporate structured social and emotional learning activities into the curriculum, which help promote positive relationships.
- Guidance and Modeling: Educators guide children to manage conflicts, share and practice kindness. They model appropriate behavior and provide language for expressing emotions and needs.
- Routine and Consistency: The routine-based environment of preschools helps children feel secure, which is essential for emotional growth.
- Opportunities for Peer Learning: Preschoolers learn by observing and imitating peers, making it a valuable space for cooperative skill-building.
Types of Social Skills to Teach Preschoolers
NAEYC gives the following examples of how teachers can nourish children’s social and emotional well-being:
- Ms. Johnson displays a pleasant facial expression throughout the day. She smiles when greeting children in the morning, says goodbye in the afternoon and acknowledges children’s appropriate behaviors.
- Mr. Logan uses the appropriate tone of voice at all times. His speech is at normal pitch and volume; his tone is relaxed and soft. Even when he has to redirect a child’s behavior, he remains calm and warm to convey that his concern is with the behavior, not the child.
- Ms. Aragon gives appropriate touches when necessary, such as a pat on the back, a handshake, hugs and brief tickles.
- Ms. Lizama moves physically close to the children and bends or crouches to be at the children’s eye level while talking to them.
- Mr. Sharma often uses loving comments to show he cares: “I am so happy to see you this morning!,” “I missed you yesterday,” “I love seeing your smile!” And he is careful to make such comments to all the children in his classroom.
Certain social skills form the foundation for healthy interpersonal relationships and emotional growth in young children. One key area is cooperation, which means teaching children to share, take turns and collaborate on tasks.
Empathy is also important, so preschoolers learn to understand and respect the feelings of others. Teaching manners and fairness also matters, as does actively listening when others speak and responding appropriately.
Children also must learn to express their thoughts, needs and emotions clearly and respectfully and to manage their impulses and emotions in social settings.
Social Skill Development Activities for Preschoolers (3-5 years old)
Here are some fun, practical activities to develop preschoolers’ social skills while keeping them engaged:
1. Turn-Taking Games
Play simple games like rolling a ball back and forth, or board games that require waiting for a turn. These teach patience and sharing.
2. Role-Playing Scenarios
Set up pretend play situations like a grocery store or a doctor’s office. These activities encourage cooperation and creativity while practicing social interactions.
3. Group Projects
Assign group tasks such as building a Lego tower or creating a collaborative art piece. These help children learn teamwork and negotiation.
4. Feelings Matching Games
Use flashcards with faces displaying different emotions such as happy, sad, angry or surprised. Ask children to match emotions to scenarios and practice labeling their own feelings.
5. Active Listening Circle
Sit children in a circle and take turns sharing short stories or thoughts. Teach them to wait their turn and make eye contact as others are speaking.
Emotional Development Activities for Preschoolers (3-5 years old)
Teaching preschoolers to manage and express their emotions is just as important as developing their social skills. Below are a few activities to help with emotional growth:
1. Emotion Charades
Have children act out emotions like happiness, anger or sadness without using words while others guess the emotion. This helps them better identify and express feelings.
2. Breathing Exercises
Teach simple breathing techniques to help kids calm themselves during overwhelming situations. For example, “smell the flower, blow out the candle” teaches deep breaths in and out.
3. “How Would You Feel?” Scenarios
Create short stories or moments like “What would you feel if your toy got lost?” Encourage discussion and reflection on emotions.
4. Storytime with Emotional Themes
Read books about emotions, such as “The Color Monster” or “When Sophie Gets Angry.” Use the stories to talk about feelings and how characters manage them.
5. Kindness Jar
Have a jar where children can drop notes or tokens when they perform kind acts. Celebrate kindness weekly and emphasize the emotional impact of helping others.
6. Mirror Play
Encourage children to look into mirrors and mimic different facial expressions for emotions. This fosters self-awareness and empathy.
Make Social and Emotional Learning Fun and Consistent
Social and emotional development is an important part of a preschool curriculum. Yet too many child care programs do not use a curriculum designed for early childhood education.
The 2025 Child Care Business Trends Report from Procare Solutions found that around one-third of respondents create their own curriculum. And a similar number still rely on paper-based curriculum, which becomes outdated quickly and often is difficult for teachers to understand.
Procare Early Learning powered by Learning Beyond Paper is an all-digital early childhood curriculum specifically designed to meet the unique needs of educating children from infancy through pre-kindergarten.
The curriculum is embedded into Procare, making it easier and less time-consuming for busy teachers and administrators to provide high-quality education.
With Procare Early Learning powered by Learning Beyond Paper, child care centers can:
- Equip teachers with state-of-the-art online curriculum at their fingertips
- Dramatically reduce the amount of time spent on lesson planning each week
- Offer children a high-quality, developmentally appropriate curriculum
- Save money with this cost-efficient solution that’s integrated with Procare
This curriculum can be used in ALL child care center classrooms, with 52 weeks of lesson plans and more than 4,000 daily activities for infants, toddlers, preschoolers and pre-kindergarteners. Learning areas include STEAM, language and literacy, physical development, cognitive, music and movement as well as interactive reading. Plus, teachers get tips and tools.
Procare is the only solution that can deliver the entire early childhood education ecosystem — lesson planning, lesson delivery within the classroom as well as assessment and parent engagement.
How much time and money could your child care center save using a digital curriculum designed for young learners? Enter your number of staff, number of students and type of program into our online calculator to learn your potential savings!
Procare Cost and Time Savings Calculator Automated Payment Processing Cost & Time Savings Calculator Digital Curriculum Cost and Time Savings Calculator
Calculate your potential cost and time savings by using Procare’s all-in-one child care management software. All we will need from you is some information about your child care location*: Calculate your potential cost and time savings by using Procare’s secure and effortless child care payment processing. All we will need from you is some information about your child care location*: Calculate your potential cost and time savings by using Procare’s classroom management. All we will need from you is some information about your child care location*:
* Our data model is based on our experience working with over 100,000 child care centers, before and after school programs and youth organizations since 1992.
Switching to will save you hours and a month!*
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We understand that smaller centers and in-home daycare providers are operating on a tight budget, and that is why we provide all these features for the affordable price of just $25 per month. Let us handle the business of child care so you can get back to caring for your children.
To learn more about Procare home version, click below.
*Please note that the report you see only factors in cost and time savings for the in-home solution features. For Procare home version users that are interested in seeing how they can benefit from Procare’s full suite of capabilities, contact us today to speak to a Procare representative. *Please note that the report you see only factors in cost and time savings for the in-home solution features. For Procare home version users that are interested in seeing how they can benefit from Procare’s full suite of capabilities, contact us today to speak to a Procare representative. *Please note that the classroom management functionality is not available for in-home users. For Procare home version users that are interested in seeing how they can benefit from Procare’s full suite of capabilities, contact us today to speak to a Procare representative.
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