Okay. When we’re talking about teaching kids about friendship, let’s first think about the start of the school year. How can you encourage friendships at the beginning of the year? I think that some icebreaker activities during the first week of school are a good way to start. Have you ever heard of Beach Ball Toss?
You label a beach ball with words like favorite food, favorite color, and favorite TV show. Kids can sit in a circle and toss the ball back and forth around the circle, and wherever your hand lands when you catch the ball is what you tell the group.

Another good icebreaker is Friendship Web. Sit in a circle and have one student begin with a ball of yarn. They say their name and one thing they like, and then they hold the string and toss the yarn to somebody across the circle, who then tells their name and something they like. Then they keep holding the loose part of the string and toss it to someone else. When you’re done, you’ve created a literal web of connections.

Guess Who is another fun icebreaker. You can get some index cards and write some descriptive clues about each student on the cards, and then you can either pick a card or have one of the kids pick the card and read the clues out loud. Then kids have to guess who’s being described. You can have things like their hair color, favorite songs, if they’re a boy or a girl, how many brothers or sisters they have, and their favorite games to play — stuff like that on the [00:03:00] cards.

Another great way to encourage friendship is to read some picture books specifically about friends and different issues that can arise. One book that I really love is called I Walk With Vanessa by Kerascoët. It’s one of those books that sticks with you and really gets kids thinking about how to stand up for each other. It’s actually wordless, which I love, because the pictures really do all the talking.

The story is about a little girl named Vanessa who keeps getting left out of things at school. Then, on her way home from school, she gets picked on by a boy. She’s really feeling bad about herself, and another little girl in her class sees it happen and feels very upset about it but sort of helpless at the time. So she thinks about it all night and then decides to do something about it. The next day, she goes over to Vanessa’s house on her way to school and walks to school with her, and then her friends join in with them on the walk. That simple act of walking beside her shows the whole class that they can stand up [00:04:00] to bullying together. So it’s a great book to read when you want to talk about friendship and being kind to one another.

Another great book is called The Invisible Boy. It’s by Trudy Ludwig, and it’s sort of along the same line — about a little boy named Brian who feels invisible because nobody ever asks him to play and he gets left out of everything. He isn’t even invited to the other kids’ birthday parties. But then one day, a new kid named Justin joins the class, and Brian is the first one to make him feel like he belongs. It was a really small thing that he did, but it made a big difference for that new kid, Justin. So they end up working on a class project together, and then finally the other kids in the class get a chance to see Brian for who he really is, and he finally starts getting included in things. It’s a great book to read with kids if you want to talk about including others or looking out for someone who might be feeling left out.

Actually, one of my favorite friendship activities to do at the beginning of the year goes along with the book [00:05:00] Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry. I talked a little bit about this in Episode Five when we were talking about what to do the first week of school. In the story, a little stick and a little stone are best friends and they do everything together. One day, a pinecone comes along and starts to act like a bully, so Stick and Stone stick up for each other. They help each other out when they’re in sticky situations, and it’s just a really cute story about what it means to be a friend.

So after we read the book, I have the kids partner up to visit some friendship stations that I have set up all around the room. The key to this is to have kids pick a new friend — someone they don’t already know or play with — so they can make a new friend in the room. It’s really helpful for those kids who are shy or don’t make friends easily.

You know, when I was little, I was that kid. I was really shy and would always stand back and just sort of wait for someone to ask me to play or include me, and I always just felt awkward joining in if I didn’t [00:06:00] already know someone. And if nobody asked me to play, then I felt left out and lonely. And honestly, I’m still like that to this day. I have a very hard time just starting a conversation with someone I don’t know. So activities like this would have really helped me when I was in school.

So anyway, once the kids have their brand new partner, they visit four friendship stations. They make friendship bracelets, paint kindness rocks, play a friendship memory game, and also play a game where they walk around and find other kids who like the same things they do. It’s a great way for kids to get to know each other right at the beginning of the year — but honestly, it could be done any time of the year when kids are struggling with friendships or if you get a new kid in the classroom.

As the year goes on, I think it’s good to continue to encourage friendships and have little reminders of what it means to be a good friend. I used to try to do different social emotional learning activities regularly in my classroom. We would do things pertaining to [00:07:00] kindness, respect, or how to be helpful — stuff like that.

I’d usually take about a month on each topic, and we used to do daily slides about whatever our topic of the month was. I usually chose either September or February to dive into the topic of friendship. September was good because we were just getting to know each other, so friendship was good to talk about then. But February is also a good month because with Valentine’s Day, it’s all about love and kindness and caring for others, so it sort of ties in naturally.

In our social emotional learning units, each unit had special superhero characters called the Behavior Bunch, and the friendship superhero was called Friendly Frankie. Each day I had a little Friendly Frankie puppet that led the lesson. We’d do different activities each day that took about 15 minutes, and we’d talk about different issues that had to do with friendship. We’d talk about how to be a friend, sharing and taking [00:08:00] turns, conflict resolution, and thinking about other people’s feelings.

We’d read different picture books that had to do with those ideas and then do little turn-and-talk activities. I might give the kids a writing prompt to write about. Usually, once a week, we’d do a little role play activity where I’d give the kids a scenario to act out — like I might pick two kids and have one of them pretend to be a new student who didn’t know anybody, and then the other kid would show how they could be friendly to them — maybe invite them to play outside at recess or sit with them at lunch.

We’d do little role play activities like that, and it was a really great way for kids to see what being a friend looked like in a real situation. On Fridays, I’d give the kids a secret mission to complete. It might be something like make a new friend today or do one nice thing for a friend. At the end of the day, we’d meet at the carpet and the kids would say if they completed their secret mission and what [00:09:00] they did. If they completed the mission, they’d earn a special sticker to put in their little Behavior Bunch notebook.

So our friendship unit lasted about a month, and we’d just do little 15-minute activities every day to learn how to be a friend and encourage better friendships between the kids. There are lots of other everyday things you can do to encourage friendship in your classroom.

One way is to have kids work with partners on different activities. You can play some simple board games and have kids play with a partner. I used to have little phonics games or math games, and I would make about 10 or 12 copies of the game so that kids could play with a partner. Every once in a while, when we had about 10 minutes to fill, I’d pull one of those games out and the kids could partner up and play together. But instead of kids picking their own partner, I had all of their names on popsicle sticks that I kept in a cup. I’d pull out two sticks, and that’s who their partner was for that day. That way, kids weren’t always playing with the same [00:10:00] friend and nobody felt left out.

Another way to encourage friendships throughout the year is to do cooperative learning activities. One of my favorites was when we would research and write about different animals. I’d have maybe five or six different animals to choose from, and the kids could pick which animal they wanted to learn about — and that’s the group they’d be in. They had to work together with those children to read and learn about the animal. Then I’d give the group a giant piece of paper with a web graphic organizer, and each kid would have to write one fact they learned about the animal. Then, to write their reports, each of the kids would take one fact to write and illustrate about, and then they’d put their pages all together into a book. At the end, they’d work together to make their animal’s habitat in a shoebox.

The kids really loved doing this. We usually took about a week, and they’d work in their little cooperative group every day doing the research, the writing, or working on the habitat. It was really great to see them all working together. Sometimes there’d be an [00:11:00] argument over something, but then they had to use their conflict resolution skills to work it out.

Another good cooperative learning activity is working in a small group or with a partner to make Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons. We’d read the book Balloons Over Broadway and learn all about Tony Sarg — he was the inventor of the Macy’s Parade balloons. Then I’d have a table full of all sorts of craft supplies and balloons, and the kids had to work with their team to come up with a balloon idea. They’d draw it out on paper and write about it, and then they’d actually make it.

Another really fun one is to make leprechaun traps at St. Patrick’s Day. You can read the book How to Trap a Leprechaun by Sue Fliess and then have kids construct their own leprechaun traps. Have them work with a partner — they think this is a blast — and they have to work with their friend to decide the best way to trap the leprechaun. Are they going to make a trap door? A cage? They’ve got to work together to decide, and it’s another great way to build friendships in your classroom. [00:12:00]

Some other ideas to encourage friendships: you could have a Buddy Bench on the playground. The Buddy Bench is a special bench where kids can sit when they need a friend to play with. If kids see somebody sitting on the Buddy Bench, they can go over and invite them to play. There’s actually a book called The Buddy Bench by Patty Brozo, and it’s a little story about how the Buddy Bench works. It’s a great book to read with the kids before you introduce the bench to them, so they know how to use it and watch for kids who need a friend.

Another thing we always did in my classroom was talk about our gifts. I used to tell the kids that everyone brought a gift to our classroom. Some kids were really good at reading or math. Other kids were great artists and could draw really well. Some kids were great singers, and other kids were just really great at helping. Over the year, we would talk about our gifts, and I would point out different things that the kids were good at. When somebody needed help with something, I’d encourage them to ask somebody who had [00:13:00] that gift to help them. For instance, if somebody needed help drawing — let’s say a dog or something — I might say, “Why don’t you ask Nathan? He’s great at drawing. That’s one of his gifts.”

Over time, the kids learned to not only ask others when they needed help with something, but also to be the helper in different situations. It was really sweet because as the year went on, I’d hear kids saying stuff like, “Ask Trenton to help you draw that — that’s his gift.” It really builds kids up because everybody was good at something. They might not be the best reader in the class, but maybe they were excellent at tying shoes. That was their gift, and everybody felt good about themselves.

Just one of those ideas by itself isn’t going to change the climate in your classroom, but when you do lots of things over the school year — things like cooperative learning, role playing, having a Buddy Bench, and talking about each other’s gifts — well, now you’ve started to create a community. A place where kids [00:14:00] value and care about each other. And that’s the foundation of friendship.

Okay, friends, I hope this episode got you thinking a little bit about how you can help your students begin to build friendships in your classroom. It doesn’t happen overnight, but each day, bit by bit, you can begin to build that caring community with lasting friendships that kids will take with them for years.

All of the resources I mentioned today are listed in the show notes. And as always, if you’re enjoying the podcast, I’d love it if you’d leave a review and tell me which episode has been your favorite so far. See you next week, and remember to make learning feel like play.

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