When preparing children for kindergarten admissions interviews and playdates, social-emotional skills are at the core of what I’m targeting.
As a speech therapist working in your Upper East Side home, your child will interact with me from the moment I walk in the door.
We’ll work on eye contact, a firm, confident handshake, and paying attention throughout and as we transition between tasks.
The foundation provided in kindergarten prep can help with 1:1 teacher interaction, and facilitate sharing toys and feelings, following directions and rules, attending, curiosity, turn-taking, and separating easily from you when it’s time to go into the interview, playdate, or test.
Simultaneously carrying over listening, cooperation, and attention into challenging but fun work takes practice. Pre-Kindergarteners often demonstrate significant growth in social-emotional skills from participating in our weekly sessions.
Through stimulating books with just-right vocabulary, I encourage children to make predictions, answer thought-provoking questions, and talk about character traits and feelings. We try to go beyond “happy” and “sad” and use words such as: brave, proud, bossy, helpful, funny, caring, shy, lazy, etc. Children are encouraged to relate character situations and feelings to themselves. This allows your child to learn to talk about feelings, which can help them manage their feelings more effectively.
All types of social-emotional skills in a classroom can not be represented in 1:1 playdates with an adult. Encouraging your preschooler to have drop-off playdates and try different sports/art classes with new friends may encourage social-emotional skills.
If you are interested in your preschooler meeting with Stephanie Sigal, M.A. CCC-SLP, in your Upper East Side home to work on kindergarten prep, please contact Stephanie at sayandplay@yahoo.com. Stephanie looks forward to hearing from you!