Making Friends, PreK–3

Helping students develop healthy social skills is child′s play

Research shows that a child′s social and behavioral skills affect the development of cognitive and physical abilities. Set students on a path to success and have fun doing it with this newly retitled edition of the popular Wanna Play. The authors provide hundreds of activities that help children learn how to behave appropriately and make friends. Included are tools for teaching emotion regulation, team playing, and body safety to all children, making this resource ideal for use in inclusive settings. New features include:

• A social interaction checklist for identifying learners′ strengths and weaknesses
• Teacher-friendly activities that can be used in small groups or with the whole class
• A chapter on teaching emotions and communication skills

Students with social challenges benefit from direct instruction, and early intervention helps prevent behavior problems and pave the way to academic success. This hands-on guidebook gives teachers, counselors, behavior therapists, and caregivers a wealth of easily implemented and fun-filled ways to enhance children′s skills in all areas of social interaction.

Ruth Herron Ross, owner and author of The Wanna Play Program, holds a Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood and Elementary Education from Beaver College and a Master of Science in Special Education and Specialty Reading from St. Joseph’s University. She is currently working on her BCBA. Ruth has dedicated her life to the education of children with special needs and the autism community. Ruth has work with children from ages two to seventeen and is trained in a variety of one-on-one early intervention and therapeutic programs such as ABA, Floortime, Son-Rise, and Interactive Metronome. Her 15 years of education experiences, combined with her early intervention training, gave Ruth the foundation of knowledge in autism, language development, and socialization skills needed to create The Wanna Play Program. Over the years she has provided numerous trainings to parents and professional and is a founding member and lead trainer of the Valley Forge Education Services’ community outreach program Caring Kinships: ASD—Matching Families with Sitters. Ruth has been facilitating social skill groups and individual sessions for children as director of the Pennsylvania location for the past ten years and in the New Jersey location for the past two years. Beth and Ruth have been successfully using their education, personal experience, and passion in children’s social development for over a decade. They found that children were not applying the social skills they had learned into school and community settings. There were few programs dealing with socialization that accommodated children on many different interactive levels. They developed a curriculum that was flexible and easily personalized for the specific needs of each child. This insight has evolved into The Wanna Play Program. Ruth Herron Ross and Beth Roberts have been successfully using The Wanna Play Program’s techniques with children for over a decade. They have lectured in schools, parent support groups and conferences on the program’s benefits and application. They have been training teachers, parents, professional and children on social skills as well as the methodology and teaching guidelines suggested in the program.