Our preschoolers are bursting to connect with each other! They want to make friends but sometimes find it challenging to connect in a positive way. So with this in mind, I’ve gathered some of my favorite friendship building activities I have used in my classroom that have helped my students develop those friendship skills in fun and engaging ways.
Before I begin sharing my go-to friendship building activities, I wanted to share my free conflict resolution booklet with you, because I know, it is vital to include conflict resolution skills when teaching friendship skills to your preschoolers. So click on the image below to download this freebie!
How do you teach friendship to preschoolers?
Teaching friendship to preschoolers is a fundamental aspect of early education. By modeling, providing explicit guidance, and creating engaging activities, we lay the foundation for positive social interactions. This blog post outlines some practical strategies to instill crucial friendship skills in young learners.
Here are the steps to teaching friendship skills to preschoolers:
Model it: Incorporate friendship into your daily interactions. Demonstrate kindness, empathy, and cooperation with both children and adults. Children absorb behavior through observation, making your actions a powerful teaching tool.
Explicitly teach what it means to be a good friend: Creating a clear understanding of friendship sets the stage for positive social development. Break down the concept – what does it look like? What does it sound like? Document these insights on an anchor chart as a visual reminder.
Start with pair work: Begin with small group activities to ease children into social interactions. Gradually increase group sizes to build confidence in their friendship-building abilities.
Highlight good friendship skills: Positive reinforcement is key. Acknowledge and celebrate instances of good friendship skills. This affirms their efforts and reinforces the importance of these behaviors.
Revisit often: Repetition is crucial for skill development. Regularly revisit the concept of friendship, incorporating it into daily routines and activities.
Opportunities for collaborative work: Provide structured opportunities for collaborative learning. From group projects to shared play centers, these experiences offer a platform for practicing and refining friendship skills.
Why Focus on Friendship Skills for Preschoolers
Friendship is the cornerstone of social development, influencing how children interact and connect with others. Cultivating strong friendship skills in preschool lays the groundwork for positive relationships, effective communication, and a sense of belonging.
Friendship Building Activities
Friendship is a cornerstone of social development, influencing how children interact and connect with others. To nurture these crucial skills, engaging activities are key. There are so many friendship building activities, including dynamic friendship-building games, crafts, and imaginative play. All of these activities are designed to foster cooperation, communication, and empathy in the young hearts of your preschoolers. Below are some tried and true friendship building activities I have used over the years.
- Friendship Building Games
Games about friendship are a dynamic way to instil valuable social skills. These interactive activities encourage cooperation, communication, and empathy.
- Who’s Under the Blanket?: My students LOVE this game! Sit your students in a circle and ask them to all close their eyes… no peeking! You walk around the outside of the circle with a blanket/table cloth and cover a child with the blanket.
Then, everyone opens their eyes and has to guess who’s under the blanket. Sounds simple right? Trust me, it’s harder than you think! This fun game fosters trust and camaraderie.
- Paired Scavenger Hunt: There are a few ways to play this. You could either put the students in pairs to work together on the scavenger hunt or you could hide pictures that have a matching pair and the students have to work together once they have found the pictures to match them together. This is a great way to work on teamwork and problem-solving.
- Hi, My Friend: Blindfold a child and have another child sit next to them and say, “Hi my friend, can you guess who I am?” Preschoolers love this game and it allows them to connect through introductions, enhancing sensory awareness and communication.
- Friendship Craft
Craft activities provide a creative outlet for building friendships. These hands-on projects encourage collaboration and the sharing of ideas, reinforcing the value of working together towards a common goal.
- Make Friendship Bracelets: Provide your students with an array of colorful paper, gems, sparkles and whatever else you have in your crafting area and invite them to make paper friendship bracelets to give to their friends. Another idea would be to provide beads and some elastic to create beaded bracelets. My students over the years have loved making and giving bracelets to their friends and teachers!
- Group Artwork: Collective creativity on a large canvas fosters a sense of belonging and unity. You could create chalk drawing spaces on the concrete outdoors or encourage students to add to a mural on a wall. You could even place a large sheet of paper on the easel or on a table for students to work on collaborative artworks together.
- Dramatic Play for Friendship
Did you know your dramatic play area is an ideal setting for honing friendship skills? Children practice cooperation, negotiation, and empathy through imaginative scenarios, mirroring real-life interactions. Along with all that, they have the best time in the dramatic play area!
What I love most about the dramatic play area is it attracts all different students into the area at different times; so the students get to interact with students they might not normally hang out with which makes for ‘interesting’ interactions and many opportunities to practice friendship skills.
- Create a Recipe for Being a Good Friend
Creating a “recipe” for being a good friend is a fun and memorable way to reinforce the qualities and behaviors that define positive friendships. What you can do is grab a cooking pot and tell your students you want to make the best friendship soup ever. What ingredients would I need to make a great friendship soup? What ingredients make a good friend?
Don’t forget to suggest a few ‘ingredients’ that we wouldn’t want to include in our recipe! My students get such a giggle from those!
This fun activity sparks discussion and reflection, solidifying the concept of friendship in the minds of our students.
- Read Books about Friendship
Books are powerful tools for teaching important life lessons, including friendship. Children learn valuable empathy, kindness, and cooperation insights through relatable characters and engaging narratives.
Some of my favorite books about friendship are:
- Enemy Pie: It was the perfect summer. However, that all changes when a new kid moves in down the street and becomes the neighborhood enemy. Hopefully, some enemy pie will help solve the problem! This funny and endearing story will help all of your preschoolers realize a new friend may not be who they thought they’d be!
- My Mouth Is A Volcano: Sometimes, kids can not control their voice, and Louis interrupts constantly! He has to share his thoughts, but he doesn’t realize how sometimes you need to take turns. When friends start to interrupt Louis, he learns to be more respectful with his voice.
- My Friend is Sad: Gerald, the elephant, is not feeling very happy, and Piggie is determined to find a way to cheer him up. He dresses up as a cowboy, clown, and robot. But does any of it work? This book will bring a smile to even the most pessimistic reader.
- Use Hula Hoops to Talk about Personal Space
Understanding personal space is crucial in building respectful friendships. Using hula hoops as visual aids, children learn to respect boundaries while engaging in interactive and kinesthetic learning. Try this Hula Hoop Space Bubble activity to talk about personal space.
Ask each child to stand in a hula hoop on the ground, making sure the hula hoops are not touching each other. Explain to your students that these hula hoops are our own personal space bubble. They can lift up their hula hoops and move around (play music if you like).
Explain how it is important to keep the hula hoop from touching others and they have to try not to bump into another hula hoop when moving through the room. If they touch another person’s hula hoop, this could pop their bubble and they will have to ‘fix’ their bubble by doing something. Decide as a group what that could be. For example, 5 star jumps.
Once the bubble is ‘fixed’ they can rejoin the game. Now you can play some music. When the music is ‘on,’ your students can move freely and stop moving when the music is off.
- Role Play Friendship Scenarios
Role-playing empowers children to explore different social situations and practice effective responses. By simulating friendship scenarios, children develop problem-solving skills and enhance their understanding of empathetic behavior. List some common scenarios you observe in your classroom and bring them to group time.
You could get your students to role play them or have puppets act out the different friendship scenarios. Then discuss what we could do to be a better friend in each situation. Some scenarios I have created are Fairness Scenarios, Conflict Resolution Scenarios and Social Scenarios.
- Play Simple Board Games or Card Games
Simple board games like Snakes & Ladders encourage turn-taking, sharing, and gracious winning or losing, all essential aspects of positive social interactions. Initially, sit with your students and facilitate play whilst they are learning the rules of a game. This is a great opportunity for you to encourage all the friendship skills you are working on.
Why not raid your local thrift store for some board games or card games? My classroom favorites are Uno, Dominos, Snakes & Ladders, The Shopping List Game, Insey Winsey Spider Game.
- Make Kindness Count in Your Classroom
Promoting kindness and friendship in the classroom cultivates a positive and inclusive atmosphere. There are so many ways to promote the value of kindness in your classroom. You could highlight kindness holidays, read books on kindness or have a kindness classroom challenge. Children internalize the value of compassion and cooperation by setting challenges and recognizing acts of kindness.
Creating a kindness classroom challenge is easy. Make a list of Kindness Challenges for the whole class – one for each day or one per week works well too. They might include kindness challenges such as ‘give a compliment to someone’, ‘greet all the community helpers you see’, ‘draw or write a thank you note to someone in the community’, ‘invite someone you don’t normally play with to join in a game’.
- Include Getting to Know You Activities
Establishing connections is pivotal in the friendship-building process. Getting to know you activities, such as question jar or games like “This or That,” create opportunities for children to share, relate, and bond.
Question Jar: Have a jar filled with getting to know you type questions right next to your circle time area. Whenever you have a spare moment during transition times or at the end of your morning meeting, why not pick a question from the Question Jar to ask your students. They will love sharing aspects of themselves and will have the opportunity to hear about their classmates.
“This or That” / Would You Rather: I love posing Would You Rather Questions with preschoolers. As there are only two choices, it’s pretty easy for any child to make a decision. You could invite your students to stand in front of their choice, or stand up or sit down to make their choice. Once they are comfortable with that, extend this activity by asking them to turn to the person next to them and explain why they made their choice.
Your students will learn more about each other in a fun non-confrontational way and also see that some people may think differently than them and that’s okay too.
I’ve created and used Would You Rather Questions relating to the Seasons or Would You Rather Questions relating to the holidays and my students have enjoyed them all!
Want to learn more about how to use Would You Rather Questions in the classroom? I’ve got some fun ways you can incorporate would you rather questions in your classroom in this blog post.
- Celebrate International Friendship Day
Acknowledging International Friendship Day on July 13th provides a wonderful occasion to reinforce the significance of friendship. Engaging activities and discussions centered around this global celebration strengthen the concept of friendship in a broader context. Check out my blog post about 7 Absolutely Perfect International Friendship Day Activities For Preschoolers to grab some ideas!
- Sing Friendship Songs
I love using music in my group times. It is such a powerful medium for conveying emotions and messages. Friendship songs engage children’s senses and reinforce the values and behaviors associated with positive friendships. Here are a couple songs you could use with your preschoolers:
a. Sesame Street – Be a Good Friend (Gwen Stefanie)
b. Friends Song
c. Make New Friends
d. Friendship Song – Hello
Get Inspired to Include Friendship Building Activities!
There are so many fun and engaging ways you can incorporate friendship building activities into your preschool day. Incorporating these friendship ideas and group activities into your preschool curriculum will create a nurturing environment where your students can develop their friendship skills and learn to be a great friend to others.
Want to grab more ideas on teaching friendship skills? Check out these blog posts:
???? 10 Meaningful & Fun Ways to Teach Friendship
???? 7 Absolutely Perfect International Friendship Day Activities
