Making Friends, PreK-3: A Social Skills Program for Inclusive Settings

Helping students develop healthy social skills is child's play

This newly retitled edition of the popular Wanna Play provides hundreds of fun and updated activities that help children learn how to behave appropriately and make friends. Ideal for teachers, counselors, and behavior therapists, included are tools for teaching emotion regulation, team-playing, and body safety to all children, making this resource an excellent fit for 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 emotions

Author: Ruth Herron Ross,Beth Roberts-Pacchione
Publisher: Corwin Publishers
Published: 01/28/2011
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.39lbs
Size: 11.02h x 8.57w x 0.58d
ISBN: 9781412981132

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 04/01/2011 pg. 125

About the Author

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.