Summer Break

Good social skills are critical to successful functioning in life. These skills enable children to know what to say, how to make good choices, and how to behave in diverse situations. The extent to which children possess good social skills can influence their academic performance, behavior, social and family relationships. Most children pick up positive skills through their everyday interactions with adults and peers. However, increased negative societal influences and demands on family life make it difficult to facilitate this social learning process.

The Summer Break Program is a learning program that works to foster empathy, emotional-regulation, problem-solving, and impulse-control skills. The program for children ages 4 - 12 provides a structured free 4-week daily class during the summer from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Our program is based on the Nurturing Program Curriculum and the Second Step curriculum, an exemplary program by the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.

The Summer Break program consists of multiple lessons incorporating affective, cognitive, and behavioral teaching modalities. The program is highly structured with interactive group discussions, role playing, games, and art activities that revolve around a specific topic. For young children we use "Impulsive Puppy", "Slow Down Snail", and other puppets to dramatize situations from the children's lives and Second Step lessons. For example, the teacher will make "Impulsive Puppy" bite at students' shoes, and will encourage them to "use their words" to make him stop. Older children use role play in acting out brief, simple scenarios to practice new behaviors.

The daily program presents a different topic each week throughout the summer. Activities include:

Being responsible: Children watch educational videos and discuss responsibility. They learn group rules. Activities include drawing pictures of themselves and their families and they create stories about being responsible.

Feelings: Various types of feelings are discussed during "circle time". Art projects include making happy/sad stick puppets, warm fuzzies and cool prickles, and play dough sculptures.

Self Esteem: "Circle time" focuses on the importance of liking yourself, appreciating your good qualities as well as appreciating the differences in others. Children make posters entitled "I am special because ... ". They participate in an activity called "Nice Person Chair" where each child takes turn sitting in a chair while the rest of the class talks about things they appreciate about the person.

Being Friends Children discuss how to be a friend, manners, and not bullying others. The children are introduced to the technique of "A Bug and a Wish" which helps children tell other people in a nice way what that person was doing to bother them and what they wish the person would do instead.

Resolving Conflicts: Children talk about conflict resolution including different ways to handle conflict, confrontation versus criticism and "win or lose by how you choose". They listen to stories, watch videos, complete various art projects, use puppets and role play to learn how to settle disagreements peacefully.

Positive Identity: Children review what they have learned the previous weeks. They talk about new friends that they have made and the things that they have learned.

Children who completed the program show gains in skills that enhance their academic and social development and their emotional and physical well being as indicated by:

Social Development as measured by social skills and positive relationships with peers.
Psychological development as measured by self-efficacy and task persistence.
Behavioral development as measured by diminished misconduct.

Students who have participated in our program were less likely to view aggressive behavior as a legitimate response to conflict after they completed the program. Last year's pre and post survey results indicate a 27.4% improvement in pro-social attitudes and a 53.1 % improvement in behaviors. 100% of the children improved their scores with four children more than doubling their scores.