Social Skills Activities for Special Children

Rating:
Summary: I like thsi book
Review: Book very good. can read it. It is cool. I worked in it. I have special needs . It helped a little bit. It was hard.

Rating:
Summary: Useful tool for elementary age kids
Review: Does your child come home from grade school complaining about other children? Is he or she having a tough time at recess? Do you get notes home from the teacher saying your child is daydreaming during instructions, or not behaving appropriately in the cafeteria-- even though your child has no special behavioral or cognitive problems? This might be the book for you.

This book is useful for almost any elementary aged child, and especially for the many that need to heighten their social skills. Depending on the child, some lessons will be more beneficial than others. For example, both my children enjoyed the unit on relating to peers. All kids grapple with "sharing friends", being a fair friend, listening to others, etc. Other units deal with respect for authority, procrastination, listening to instructions, etc. The subjects of this book are not commonly "taught" at school, and are also often overlooked at home, because everyone is so busy trying to play soccer and the violin and chess and do homework and gymnastics. Yet mastering the skills taught in this book will determine much of the success your child experiences throughout school, and probably life. Although we like to think our kids will learn the lessons in this book by following our good examples, or perhaps just by osmosis, fact is, most 2nd-4th graders could use a little review on the niceties of human interaction.

The book is really a workbook with instructions for the teacher, followed by a workpage for the child. I presume it was designed for school social workers to use with kids of various abilities. My children, who seem perfectly normal, like doing the worksheets, and especially enjoy the funny illustrations of children exhibiting inappropriate behavior. A little humor never hurt when delivering a message to an eight year old, eh?

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for higher functioning special folks.
Review: I found this book to be extremely helpful for my highly-functioning autistic child. It covers a vast range of situations and involves the student in thinking about solutions and coming up with their own answers. I like it so much that I'm buying one for one of his teachers as well. It is geared to higher functioning students -- others could use this as a framework and simplify things a bit, or try Carol Gray's book "The New Social Story Book" which is written much more simply and directly. It's also an excellent book, but was too simple for my needs.

Rating:
Summary: great book
Review: I found this book to be very helpful in working with students both individually and in groups. I used the activities for students ages K-5. Everyone enjoyed the activities, and the structure of the lessons helped me to guide discussions and have questions prepared to ask even on the busiest of days!

Rating:
Summary: Not What I Expected
Review: This book is tailored for older children and even then it's not well written for them. The details are too numerous to keep the young child's attention. There are not enough picture illustrations and the situations described herein are not general enough to fit society as a whole. There is too much of a focus on the "wrong" things to do in school verses the right things. Many of the suggestions and story's of how children did things the wrong way can backfire on parents and actually give children ideas of the wrong things to try. Much of the book could not be used for our home and school life situations. Few children will stay captivated by this book. My eldest child who is gifted thought it was boring and many of the issues she couldn't even relate to. My youngest was in over his head and I had to skip reading the long drawn out situations and paraphrase things to keep his attention.

Rating:
Summary: Not What I Expected
Review: This book is tailored for older children and even then it's not well written for them. The written details are too numerous to keep the young child's attention. There are not enough picture illustrations and the situations described herein are not general enough to fit society as a whole. There is too much of a focus on the "wrong" things to do in school verses the right things. Many of the suggestions and story's of how children did things the wrong way can backfire on parents and actually give children ideas of the wrong things to try. Much of the book could not be used for our home and school life situations. Few children will stay captivated by this book. My eldest child who is gifted thought it was boring and many of the issues she couldn't even relate to. My youngest was in over his head and I had to skip reading the long drawn out situations and paraphrase things to keep his attention.

Rating:
Summary: Higher
Review: This book was not appropriate for the students in my TMI classroom, but was designed for higher functioning students and would be a great tool for students with milder impairments.