Friendship activities for elementary students are a great way to begin your back-to-school lesson plans. Creating a caring classroom climate and teaching friendship skills will build social skills and set the tone for your whole year.
For many students, coming back to school (or starting school for the first time) is an exciting time of the year! They look forward to all the new and exciting things they'll learn and making new friends. But for some children, it can be a different experience.
Many children worry if they'll have a friend. Who will they play with? Who will they sit by for lunch? Will anyone talk to them or be their friend?
Maybe you’ve been in school for a while and you’re noticing a lot of tattling or other problems in your classroom. Take a look at how these friendship activities helped solve these problems in our classroom!
Read Aloud Activities
One of our favorite children's books, Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry is the perfect book to use when teaching friendship skills.
In the story, Stick and Stone become friends and stick up for one another when they are bullied and help each other out of sticky situations. It teaches young children how to be a good friend which is an important skill for all students. It's one of my favorite friendship books because young children can relate to it so much.
After reading the story we discussed the story elements and worked together to sort characters, setting and plot in the pocket chart.
We worked together to create a chart of some of the things that makes a good friend.
Next the students worked to retell the story on their own and did a sorting worksheet.
Friendship Writing Activities
Next it was time for the students to show some of the things they learned about being a good friend. They did a writing activity where they showed a time when they were being a good friend. And then we finished the activity by making a Stick and Stone craft.
Fun Friendship Activities For Elementary Students
To reinforce friendship and help students get to know other kids, we visited 4 friendship stations that I had set up around the classroom. The students chose either a stick or a stone from a cup.
The sticks and stones were numbered and each child with a stick had to find the student with the matching number on their stone. Everyone was paired with a random person, not necessarily someone they were already friends with. This gave all the students an opportunity to meet new people in a fun way.
Next, the students visited friendship stations with their partners. This gave them the chance to do something fun with their new friend and also get to know other kids by working in small groups. It was a great way to start building healthy friendships in our classroom. Here is a list of the friendship activities that we did at each station:
1. Making Friendship Bracelets
At station number 1, the students made friendship bracelets. I put a tray of paper bracelets with kind words and questions like “Will you be my friend?” or statements like “Friendship rocks!” and “Best friend”. Each child chose a bracelet, colored it, and then their new friend helped them tape it around their wrist. One of the qualities of a good friend is helpfulness. This was a great activity to show how we can help each other in simple ways every day.
2. Find A Friend Scavenger Hunt
At station number 2, the kids did a find-a-friend scavenger hunt. The students worked with their partners to find other kids in the room who liked some of their favorite things. They walked around the room with a clipboard searching for different people who liked things such as pizza, ice cream, school, dogs, etc. When they found someone who liked the same things as them, that new person wrote their name under the picture.
This activity was a big hit! Young kids love being able to move around the classroom and it was a good way to make new friendships. This gave kids another opportunity to get to know new students in our room. There were two versions, for both readers and nonreaders, so everyone could participate!
3. Friendship Rocks Memory Game
At station 3 the students played the classic game of Memory. In our version, called Friendship Rocks memory game, the students turned over cards that showed different ways that children can be friends. Each picture card showed children doing fun activities like playing games together, playing on the playground, and working together in school. It was a fun friendship game that showed healthy relationships and what good friendship is all about.
4. Friendship Activity – Painting Kindness Rocks
At station 4, the students painted kindness rocks. I found some large flat rocks at our local dollar store and the students painted them with tempera paint. When they were dry they added smiles, hearts, or nice words like love or friends with a permanent marker.
We hid the rocks on the playground and left them for new friends to find. This was a great place because the students could watch during recess as the next person found their rock. The kids had a good time waiting and watching and it was fun for everyone. We knew that this would bring a smile to different kids' faces when they found our kindness rocks!
5. Teaching The Importance Of Friendship
One of the best ways to teach the importance of friendship was by making friendship soup. I purchased cereal, marshmallows, and other goodies as the ingredients for our “soup” and brought in a big bowl from home. The big bowl that we mixed our ingredients in represented our classroom and each ingredient in the soup represented the building blocks we needed to have a great year at school.
We followed the friendship soup recipe and added ingredients like fun, respect, doing our best work, acts of kindness, etc. As we added the ingredients we talked about different situations that might happen over the school year. We talked about the different experiences we might have with our new friends and how sometimes we might get angry or sad. We discussed peer pressure and how true friends stick by each other when other kids might try to be mean.
The students learned that being a good friend is one of our most important life skills. When each ingredient had been added to the soup it spelled out the word FRIENDS!
We finished up our friendship theme unit by making this mini book about making good choices. The book showed children in different social situations making poor choices or having friendship issues. The kids had to find pictures that would show good examples of how to make better choices.
Finally, we used this simple assessment to find out how much the students learned about the characteristics of a good friend.
The kids really loved all of these activities and it was a great way to start our school year on the right foot. Children don't always come to school knowing how to be a friend and it's a necessary skill for every student. Friendship lessons can make a major impact on your classroom culture and behavior management all year.
If you're finding that your students need a little reminder, these friendship activities could be done at any time of the year and this unit is a great addition to your friendship SEL curriculum. Head over here to take a closer look at this friendship theme unit.
Looking for more ideas about friendship and social emotional learning? Take a look at these posts:
Save these ideas for later!
Take a minute to save these tips to your favorite back-to-school Pinterest board so you can remember them later!
