Initiating Hello

For many of the children I work with initiating an interaction with a classmate or familiar adult can be really challenging.  As some of the nursery age children I am working with are starting to get ready for school I have been thinking of ways to help them say an appropriate ‘hello’ to their friends.

To teach different ways of saying hello that also support the development of tolerance of brief touch with others I came up with a quick hello activity involving a dice and, of course, a song!

On the ‘hello dice’ I have screen shotted in symbols from a symbol writing programme onto a dice template for 3 different ways of saying hello i.e. waving, shaking hands and giving a high five.  As I am starting off teaching these early skills I have kept it simple with just 3 actions, I will add more once these skills are established and generalised.

The idea is that in a small group the adult chooses a child to come to the front while everyone sings, to the tune of “Farmer’s in the den”, “How do you say hello? How do you say hello? Child’s name, child’s name, how do you say hello?”

The child then rolls the dice and performs the hello action with either a classmate of their choice or all the children in the small group.  Everyone takes a turn until all the children have said hello.

To generalise these skills it’s a good idea to support the children to know when is an appropriate time to say hello e.g. at the beginning of the day, when someone comes into the room and to initially offer them a choice of symbols to choose an hello action and then gradually fade the symbol and/or verbal prompts as the child becomes more able to independently greet a familiar adult or classmate.

Give using the ‘hello dice’ a try and get children saying hello!