Social Skills

Don Bosco Medien Verlag, Birgit Fuchs, Lilo Seelos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138047068, 9781138047068
• eBook ISBN: 9781351693882
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This series offers a variety of games and activities that facilitate a positive and fun learning experience for people of all ages in their emotional and behavioural development. The games and activities are suitable for both individuals and groups, and take a positive and proactive approach to the areas of: self-esteem, aggression, relaxation and concentration, and social skills. This volume contains 160 games with ideas to improve the social climate within groups. Through a wide range of fun games, the participants learn about themselves and others and develop skills in observation, precise listening and empathetic communication.

Games & Exercises for Social Skills

Awareness Games

In any group, many different people come together. Each of them is a unique individual with their own characteristics, views, attitudes, fears and preferences. It is no wonder that there is not always total harmony. Rules that have been drawn up together are supposed to help strengthen a pleasant social climate. So, if everyone has rationally mastered these rules, why is there still friction, serious conflicts, and even escalations?

The simple understanding of rules, requirements, agreements and so on is something that takes place cognitively in the brain. However, the fact that each person is a being with feelings makes the sensible keeping to desired behaviours more difficult, and indeed often impossible. And herein lies a big problem. Young people today know exactly what is expected of them. Societal pressure is enormous in terms of achievement and social adjustment. They have to function in an optimal fashion in order to ‘get anywhere in life’. By doing this, people get caught up in a whirl of expectations, own ideals, societal standards, and devastating needs to compete. We belong to a ‘head-focused’ society, with the threateningly increasing tendency to psychological frailty and helplessness. Because what is left behind during all this working and doing is, in fact, the individual person: who am I, who knows me, who actually listens to me, and who, in the end, can grant me security through their understanding attitude?

Nothing gives people more calm and security than the close dealing with someone they are allowed to be honest with, who, in this case, is interested in the weaknesses and wishes of group members. Everyone needs at least one person with whom they do not have to play an exhausting role, like an actor. Consequently, the first group of activities comprises numerous games to teach optical and social awareness skills. Only looking at a person more closely and listening to them more attentively makes it possible to really get to know them. With this, the diverse masks of the ‘muscle-man’, the ‘cry-baby’, the ‘untouchable’, and so on, can gradually be taken off, because these games require openness on all channels.

1 Idols

We can learn amazing things about our fellow human beings when we find out what idols they are crazy about, or who they model themselves on. Examples are always people who, in some way, represent attractive models. However, a model may appear attractive to one group member, but not to another.

Maybe squeaky-clean Peter really likes that really scruffy and burnt-out pop star precisely because, for him, he embodies a certain measure of casualness. Maybe Peter would really like to swap his school uniform for jeans full of holes.

The idol game will shed some light on this. In this game, all participants turn into their idolised role models – on the outside as well as the inside. Clothes, gear, hair colour (spray that can be washed out), speech, catch-phrases, performances and so on are copied as authentically as possible. Afterwards, the ‘celebrities’ (and, of course, unknown role models, too) introduce themselves, and tell the group what impresses them most about that person.

Materials: anything that might be useful for dressing up and making up

2 Padded Messages

‘It really hurt me when you told me …’ Anyone who lives with other people has had experience of this. It is inevitable that people hurt each other during daily interaction. The trick is to think about what we try to achieve with our ‘attack’. Do we want to clarify the issue, or do we want to provoke? The following game helps players to become clearer about the different emotional areas of the receiver.

Using cardboard, make a life-sized conversational partner consisting of a head, a huge stomach and rudimentary limbs. Using a felt-tip pen, make a line to divide the stomach into upper and lower portions. Then put the cardboard person outside against a tree, or tape it to the wall of the house.

Now every player dips a ball of cotton wool into water, wrings it out slightly and gets ready to throw. Hitting the cardboard hero on the head means being able to say something to someone’s face. Aiming for the upper stomach means hitting someone in the stomach verbally. Hitting the lower stomach equates to a psychological ‘hit below the belt’.

Thirty points are given for each hit to the head area, 10 points for the upper stomach and no points for hits below the belt. This is because it is always best to tell the person we are arguing with our objections, as sensitively as possible, but directly to their face, instead of hitting where it hurts even more, and thus triggering yet more aggression.

Materials: cardboard, pens, cotton wool

3 Flash-Check

Two players stand eye-to-eye. They have a minute to study each other thoroughly, and to try to remember as many details as possible.

Their observational and memory skills are then put to the test: both participants turn around 180 degrees, so that they now stand back to back. Do they remember what pattern the other’s socks were? Or whether their trousers were blue or black?

The questions about the two participants are worked out by the remaining group members, and called out one at a time.

For each correct answer, a player is allowed to score one observation point.

Rule: The players are given the same number of questions. In addition, each player has one flash-joker which he can use once before he answers a question. He receives 10 points if the correct answer is given.

Materials: paper, pens

4 Mind Reading

When we think we know someone else well, we should be able to estimate their reactions to certain topics reasonably accurately, shouldn’t we?

For this game, each participant brings along any items they choose: everyday objects, photographs, headlines or newspaper articles, and so on. Everything is put into a box.

Then the players sit around a table. The person who begins reaches into the box; pulls out one of the pieces, and places it where it is fully visible in the middle of the table. Every person memorises their first association with that object and the other players then take it in turns to try to guess what each person has thought of. The player who comes closest to guessing the association of another player is allowed to note down 10 science points, and is given...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Author
• List of Games
• Introduction
• Games & Exercises for Social Skills