Communicative abilities of a preschooler - teach communication from childhood

Formation of communication abilities in preschool age

Speech is a universal means of communication that helps convey feelings, knowledge, and wishes. Without words, it is difficult to ask for something or communicate your intentions.

However, children, due to their limited age capabilities, are just beginning to master such an important tool.

From the first years of life, a child is focused on communication. He is friendly, smiling, and willing to make contact. But, if until the age of three the baby tries to interact with others, holding on to his mother or father’s hand, then in preschool age he increasingly has to do without the direct support of an adult.

By communicating with each other, children develop and gain new experiences. Some of them are proactive and take a leading position in the game. Others are responding to this initiative and adopting the proposed rules. Still others are observant and adopt those forms of communication that appeal to them.

The development of children's communicative culture is facilitated by the help of educators and parents. Adults support, suggest what is best to do, and also help develop the ability to demonstrate important elements of communication that form the basis of emotional intelligence:

Sympathy and empathy;
The ability to imagine what another feels;
Containing emotions (without screaming, crying and stamping your feet);
Understanding that each person is individual and may feel differently.

Nonverbal stage of communication

Nonverbal communication is conversation without the use of speech. This form of contact is available at any age. Developmental researchers say that children are capable of perfectly imitating the facial expressions of adults, and are not yet constrained by conventions and norms.

This skill is especially important for establishing contact with peers. In early preschool age, it is quite difficult to get acquainted and come to an agreement with the help of speech, but improvised means come to the rescue.

Playing nearby in the sandbox, a preschooler smiles and invites his new friend to make Easter cakes together. Confirming this proposal is very simple - hold out a spatula or mold. It’s also common for kids to want to show what they can do. Attention is more often attracted by touch, and the sand castle is shown using the hands.

At this stage, it is also easier for preschoolers to express sympathy and antipathy non-verbally. Those they love get hugs and kisses. Adults and children who do not enjoy the baby’s favor may see a frown on their forehead, the child’s back, or even an attempt to hide behind their mother’s skirt.

Communicative-speech stage

As the vocabulary is filled, the development of communication abilities in preschoolers accelerates. Questions arise: “Where?”, “Where?”. The baby adds simple explanations to non-verbal signals inviting communication: “My car,” “Pour sand into the bucket.”

At 4 years old, a child can easily make narrative sentences. Communicating with other children, the preschooler discovers his involvement in the community and joyfully states: “We roll cars,” “We run.”

Five-year-old children are able to invite a peer to play and actively use more complex constructions: “Let’s play shop, I’ll sell, and you’ll buy.”

In the communication of younger preschoolers, there are also conflict situations. For the most part, they are provoked by children's egocentrism. Sometimes a child will never agree to give his toy. On the other hand, there are children who, when they see an attractive car or scoop from another child, want to get it immediately.

In any of these cases, it is important that the adult explains to the child how to ask a friend to share a toy. It is necessary to teach little communicators the accepted polite phrases that regulate communication.

From the age of five, a preschooler, thanks to the development of coherent speech and awareness of the importance of words for communication, moves to a higher level of communication. Communication skills at this stage become especially important.

Responsible parents are the key to a child’s successful development!

That is why the timely assistance of preschool education workers is of fundamental importance - you need to send your children to special institutions on time and actively support their socialization.

The fact is that this process directly depends on the influence of parents, whom the child trusts absolutely. It is the influence of parents that is primary in relation to the social development of their child. Research and statistics show that if the mother and father are responsible and competent, then the preschooler himself is much more actively involved in social life and interaction with people.

Communication with a child in the family is the basis of social and communicative adaptation in society

Also, and vice versa: a low level of speech development arises primarily due to insufficient communication in the family, the so-called “personal experience”. This affects the intellectual and creative development of preschool children.

Thus, it becomes clear that the work of parents and educators in institutions is of equal importance for the social and communicative development of children. Moreover, these two points are closely interrelated with each other.

Successful results in the development of social and communication skills in preschoolers lay the foundation for unlocking creative potential, finding their place in the world and building success in life.
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Development of communication abilities of older preschoolers

A child who prefers to spend time alone often does so for reasons of inability to be interesting and communicate well. Being among his peers, he may experience shyness, lack of self-confidence, or be aggressive. Therefore, preschool development requires the allocation of a significant amount of time for the formation of communication skills.

The conditions for the development of communication abilities imply two complementary paths. The first is active communication with adults and adopting their communication model and style of communicative behavior. The second is spending time with peers, during which children constantly learn from each other.

With the development of communicative abilities, children of senior preschool age develop stable motives for communication and a desire to interact with both adults and peers.

Borrowing adult communication models

By communicating with adults, a preschooler develops the basic components of communication skills. The ready-made model that they observe among relatives and educators allows them to understand the following:

When to make contact, that is, to understand under what conditions conversations are appropriate and when to remain silent;
How to organize communication, how to resolve conflicts, clearly see emotional empathy;
What norms and rules does communication require, that is, to determine for yourself the boundaries of acceptable harshness, frankness, and playfulness.

Also, dialogues with adults mean obtaining information about knowledge and cultural values. By example, children learn to tell stories, learn how to make their stories interesting and exciting.

Development of abilities in communicating with children

The fundamental difference between communication with peers is increased emotional intensity. In this case, boundaries are removed, and children learn to be sincere and artistic. Their communication includes causeless laughter, antics, loud statements that turn into screaming.

In this way, children experiment, independently looking for ways to attract attention to themselves without the help of adults.

Also in peer communication there may be elements such as:

Unpredictable combinations of syllables and sounds - attempts to create your own language;
Lack of rules;
Having harsh words to help release emotions.

If, when talking with adults, a preschooler asks and listens more, then in conversations with peers he strives to speak out himself, even if this means shouting down others. Moreover, the preschooler expects evaluation or new information from teachers and parents. Just by chatting with friends, he learns to express himself and emotions, express desires, show his mood through words, and even tries to take on leadership functions, demonstrating initiative and trying to manage the rest of the company.

MAGAZINE Preschooler.RF

Master class: Features of the social and communicative development of preschool children in accordance with the Federal State Educational Standard for Preschool Education

In the Federal State Educational Standard for Preschool Education, the social and communicative development of children is considered as: a positive attitude towards themselves and other children, active interaction with adults and peers, participation in joint games, the ability to negotiate, take into account the interests and feelings of others, empathize with the failures of other children, and rejoice. their successes, try to resolve conflicts, show initiative and independence in different types of activities, communicate, construct, comply with social norms of behavior and rules in different types of activities.

Preschool age is the most favorable period for social and communicative development.

This is due, on the one hand, to the continued high susceptibility to social influences, on the other, to the loss of spontaneity, the development of elements of voluntariness, self-awareness, internal ethical authorities, the emergence of a hierarchy of motives, and generalization of experiences, which provides the child with a certain level of consciousness and independence (A.G. Arushanova, S. S. Bychkova, Yu. V. Polyakevich, E. O. Smirnova, etc.).

E. A. Shcherbakova considers the process of social and communicative development of a child in the unity of its manifestations: adaptation to the social world; integration and acceptance of the social world as a given; differentiation - the ability and need to change, transform social reality, the social world and individualize in it.

According to the Federal State Educational Standard, the main tasks of the social and communicative development of preschool children are:

Creating conditions for preschool children to assimilate the norms and values accepted in society.
Development of social and emotional intelligence of children, their emotional responsiveness, empathy.
Development of independence, purposefulness and self-regulation of children’s actions.
Forming a respectful attitude and a sense of belonging to one’s family, to the community of children and adults in the team.
Formation in children of the basics of safe behavior in everyday life, society, in nature, as well as readiness to interact with peers.

Socio-communicative development is a complex process during which a child learns the values, traditions, and culture of the society or community in which he will live. This is the development of a child’s positive attitude towards himself, other people, the world around him, the development of children’s communicative and social competence.

The most important basis for a child’s full social and communicative development is his positive sense of self: confidence in his abilities.

The activities of teachers to provide the necessary conditions for the social and communicative development of children include:

organization of the subject-spatial environment;
creating situations of communicative success for children; stimulating children's communicative activities, including using problem situations;
eliminating communication difficulties in children in collaboration with an educational psychologist and with the support of parents;
motivating the child to express his thoughts, feelings, emotions,
characteristic features of characters using verbal and non-verbal means of communication;
ensuring a balance between educational activities under the guidance of a teacher and independent activities of children;
modeling game situations that motivate a preschooler to communicate with adults and peers.

The implementation of the tasks of social and communicative development of preschool children is aimed at gaining experience in various types of children's activities.

Playful activities make the child feel like an equal member of society. In the game, the child gains confidence in his own abilities, in the ability to get real results.

Research activities enable the child to independently find a solution, confirmation or refutation of his own ideas.

Visual activity allows a child, with the help of elementary labor in the process of creating children's creative products based on imagination and fantasy, to “get used to” the world of adults, to know it and take part in it.

Subject-based activities satisfy the child’s cognitive interests at a certain period and help to navigate the world around him.

Cognitive activity enriches the child’s experience, stimulates the development of cognitive interests, gives rise to and strengthens social feelings.

Communicative activity (communication) unites an adult and a child, satisfies the child’s various needs for emotional closeness with an adult, for his support and evaluation.

Constructive activity makes it possible to form complex mental actions, creative imagination, and mechanisms for managing one’s own behavior.

Project activities activate the child’s independent activity and ensure the unification and integration of different types of activities.

Thus, in the preschool period, the child acquires initial knowledge about the life around him, he begins to form a certain attitude towards people, develops skills of correct behavior, and develops a character.

Characteristics of role-playing games for preschool children

Role-playing game is the most interesting and meaningful activity for preschool children. Its attractiveness is explained by the fact that in the game the child experiences an internally subjective feeling of freedom, the subordination of things, actions, and relationships to him.

S. L. Rubinstein characterized role-playing game as a type of game that stimulates the most spontaneous manifestation of the child, and at the same time it is based on the interaction of the child with adults [9].

According to the concept of D. B. Elkonin, role-playing game is a manifestation of the increasing connection of a preschool child with society. The manifestation of social role play is not associated with the action of internal, innate, subconscious forces, but with the completely real conditions of a child’s life in society.

Role-playing play reaches its main peak of development in older preschool age.

We can highlight the following features of role-playing games for children in older preschool age:

The game has a concept that is based on such characteristics as stability, development, dynamics.
Joint planning of play by children as a process is important.
In a role-playing game, a high level of gaming creativity is manifested, and the perspective of the game is formed.
In the community of children, joint modeling of various relationships between people takes place.
The game involves a joint construction of the plot development.
An important point is role interaction, content, and the use of various means of expression.
The speech of a preschooler occupies a significant place in the implementation of his role in the game.

In role-playing games, children come into contact with each other and, on their own initiative, have the opportunity to form their relationships.

Also based on the opinion of D. B. Elkonin, it is worth noting that the basis of a role-playing game is an imaginary situation in which the division of reality into real and symbolic is clearly expressed. Creating an imaginary situation involves consciously going beyond the boundaries of the real perceived space, generating new meanings and meanings, i.e. what children designate with the well-known word “pretend” (or as if).

The imaginary situation includes the plot, the role and the actions associated with it.

The plot is the main component of a role-playing game.

According to A. N. Leontyev, plot is a side of reality that is reflected in the game. The plot expresses the child's attitude to the world.

The plot of the game is the area of reality that is displayed by children. Children of senior preschool age already consciously approach the choice of plot, initially discuss it, and plan the development of the content. In subsequent activities, new plots are formed; this occurs during the formation of new impressions, which can be reading books, watching films, or telling stories from adults.

This is the subject of the game image, the sequence and connection of the events depicted, their totality, the way of developing the theme of the game, as N. A. Korotkova notes.

The plots of the games are quite diverse and variable.

E. D. Makarova identifies the following types of role-playing games for children:

Games with everyday themes: “home” , “family” , “holidays” , “birthdays” . In these games, games with dolls occupy a large place, through actions with which children convey what they know about their peers, adults, and their relationships.
Games on industrial and social topics that reflect people's work. For these games, themes are taken from the surrounding life.
Games on heroic and patriotic themes, reflecting the heroic deeds of our people (war heroes, space flights, etc.).
Games on themes of literary works, cinema, television and radio programs: “sailors” and “pilots” , Hare and Wolf, crocodile Gena and Cheburashka (according to the content of cartoons), etc. In these games, children reflect entire episodes from literary works, imitating the actions of heroes, adopting their behavior.

The content of the role-playing game is embodied by the child through the role he plays.

A role is an image that a child assumes voluntarily or by agreement with other players.

For a child, a role reflects his playing position: he identifies himself with a character in the plot and acts in accordance with his ideas about this character. Every role contains its own rules of behavior, taken by the child from the life around him.

Taking a role in the game, the child must react to the actions and speech of carriers of different roles, related in meaning to his role, and be able to change his role behavior during the game, depending on the actions and words of the partners. Moreover, in the game the child needs to change his role depending on the development of the plot - after being an ambulance driver, turn into a patient or a car repairman.

The teacher's task is to build role behavior. Children's attention needs to be switched from actions with toys to interaction with a partner, who at first is an adult. By responding to role-playing requests from an adult and entering into role-playing dialogue with him, the child will begin to accept the convention of his own position in the game.

Special markers and roles help to accept and maintain a role. Role markers are specific objects that designate, as if marking, a playing role. These include all kinds of collars, hats, masks, headbands, bags, parts of animal costumes, and what the child puts on to transform himself. This is a very important type of game materials serving role-playing play for preschoolers.

For the formation of a role-playing game, the following psychological and pedagogical conditions are effective:

organization of a gaming subject-spatial environment that contributes to the formation of children’s gaming experience;
the use of various forms and methods of modeling the gaming experience of children, taking into account their age characteristics, ensuring the successful solution of the problems of the educational process.

Thus, it is in role-playing games that a preschool child has a unique opportunity to realize himself as an active participant in the ongoing activity; in addition, the game clearly reveals the characteristics of the child’s thinking and imagination, his emotionality, and activity.

Social and communicative development of preschool children through role-playing games

Children's play activities are always associated with the emergence and development of certain relationships between them. In a role-playing game, the position of each child is active: he plays as long as he wants to and as long as he is interested, actively looks for partners to play with, and enters into certain relationships with them. Children come up with games themselves, organize themselves to play, resolve conflicts themselves, create playing groups themselves, and change their composition.

The possibility of role-playing play in the social and communicative development of children is obvious; this is determined, first of all, by:

development of relationships with peers in role-playing games;
learning your role in the group;
the opportunity to try yourself in different roles or activities;
building effective connections and interactions;
creating conditions for the development of social and communication skills.

Role-playing play promotes close communication between children, establishing contacts between them, and the emergence of feelings of sympathy and antipathy.

The role-playing game provides great opportunities for developing communication skills, developing the ability to live and act together, helping each other, developing a sense of collectivism and responsibility for one’s actions.

Role-playing game is a kind of school in which the child actively and creatively masters the rules and norms of people’s behavior, their attitude to work, to the world around them, to people and to themselves.

The content of a story game and the fulfillment of a role in it, obedience to the rules of behavior and the development of gaming and actual relationships, the need to make a toy for one’s game, build a structure, agreeing on actions with other players and, by providing assistance to each other in mastering work skills, all this contributes formation in children of moral feelings, friendly relationships, organizes their behavior.

In role-playing games, children take on the role of adults, modeling the relationships that adults enter into in real life, when carrying out their main social and labor functions.

The child’s communication skills are of great importance for role-playing games.

To create an interesting, meaningful role-playing game for preschool children, it is necessary to:

agree on a game;
build a vivid role-playing dialogue.

When children have a need to play, they begin to negotiate it with their partner. At the same time, children develop the ability to interact with peers, discuss, defend their point of view, make compromises, and analyze their partner’s judgments.

Taking on a role in the game, the child is forced to react to the actions and speech of partners related in meaning to his role, that is, to be able to change role behavior during the game depending on the role of the partners.

When building a role-playing dialogue, children’s vocabulary is activated, communication skills develop such as: the ability to start and end a conversation, change the topic of verbal interaction following the interlocutor’s thoughts, maintain a certain emotional tone, monitor the correctness of the language form, children more actively use facial expressions and gestures.

Based on the research of S. N. Karpova and E. D. Makarova, relationships in role-playing games contribute to the development of moral motives of behavior in children, the formation of norms and rules of interaction and communication, and the formation of social and communication skills.

Children’s communication begins to become more active when a transition to action is made together with one of the children, a process of interaction arises that causes children to communicate in one way or another, to establish some kind of relationship with each other. When playing with other children, the child develops new relationships that give rise to new requests and more diverse mutual influences.

To develop communication skills in older preschoolers, it is advisable to conduct make-believe games. Children independently come up with a plot for this game. In the process of such a task, they learn to listen to each other and continue their partner’s story. As a result, preschoolers can realize their communicative abilities and act in a coordinated manner. Children learn to focus on peer partners, listen to their opinions (after all, they can suggest other events); the ability to combine events proposed by the child himself and other participants in the overall plot of the game.

Thus, role-playing game is the most effective means of social and communicative development of preschool children. The role-playing game effectively develops the ability to live and act together, to help each other, and develops a sense of collectivism and responsibility for one’s actions. Children learn to play not next to other children, but with them, and develop the ability to listen to their interlocutor and resolve conflict situations. Organizing a role-playing game already implies that children come into contact and communicate with both peers and adults, and the more often the game is organized, the more the desire to play more and more arises.

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