Social Emotional Development

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Help Kids Learn About Feelings

Preschool is a critical time of development when it comes to social emotional skills. It is a time we learn to identify our feelings, control our feelings, play cooperatively with others, self-advocate, problem solve and so much more! Until we learn to control our feelings, sometimes they control us! This page will offer some strategies and supports for how to foster social emotional growth during early childhood.

Coping Skills

Helping your child learn to manage their emotions is no easy task. Labeling and validating their feelings can help them learn to identify what is happening in their little bodies. All our feelings are okay! We just need to find appropriate responses when things don't go our way.


Fuss Management: Comforting the Irritable Child

Helping Children Handle Disappointment

Helping the Often-Angry Child

Small Child, Big Stress?

Young Children's Mental Health: What is Essential?



Social Skills

Early Childhood is when children become aware of their peers, learn prosocial behaviors, and create friendships. We work hard on these skills at school. Below are some parent resources for how to foster social skill growth at home and in the community.


How do we teach these skills at school?

Here at CLA, we are a PBIS School. This means we teach positive behaviors and support those behaviors with interventions that focus on what children do well! In addition, we start the year with an eight weeks of intensive social emotional lessons. We use our school mascot, Mr. MAC , to teach us all the components of being a good friend. To learn more about how we teach these skills at school, click on the parent newsletters to see the focus of each week. To learn more about PBIS, see our Behavior Tools page.

Week 1 Parent Newsletter

Week 1: Expected versus Unexpected Behaviors

Parent Newsletter Week 2

Meet Mr. MAC

Week 3 Parent Newsletter

Learning to Control Our Bodies Based Upon School Expectations

Week 4 Parent Newsletter

Personal Space and How to Say Stop

Week 5 Parent Newsletter

Stopping Your Body When Someone Says "Stop!"

Week 4 Parent Newsletter

All About Feelings

Week 5 Parent Newsletter

My Feelings, My Zones: an introduction to the Zones of Regulation

Week 8 Parent Newsletter

Tying it all together to be a Super Friend!