All About Friendship - FREE ACTIVITIES
ALL ABOUT FRIENDSHIP
Friendship and conflict solving skills are so important to teach our kiddos.
Our job is to teach them important social skills. They need these tools to ensure successful relationships with their peers and adults.
It is tricky, but it can be done!
I am sharing some of my favorite books and resources to teach kiddos All About Friendship in Unit 6 of my All About Enrichment Series.
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I use these units to enhance our read aloud stories each month.
So far this year, we have learned:
All About Apples in September
All About Pumpkins in October
All About Fall in November
All About Christmas Around the World in December
All About Winter in January.
In February, it is the perfect time to dive deep into friendships and how to show others we care about them (perfect month with Valentine’s Day!)
This unit can be used any time of the year, but February works best in my classroom.
Teaching interpersonal and social skills is a must in my opinion, and we have so much fun with this unit!
FRIENDSHIP READ ALOUD BOOKS
These are the books that coordinate perfectly with the printables and activities included in this unit.
Any books can be use to enhance your friendship unit, but these are our favorite!
I read one book each week (four books will take you through the month), and then we do so many activities centered around each book/theme. I usually reread the story again during the week as this helps with vocabulary, comprehension skills, retelling, etc.
Let’s get started with our All About Friendship unit!
To start our unit, I show students our Friendship slideshow.
The real life pictures and simple sentences are perfect to get students engaged and ready to discuss what it means to be a friend. We talk about what they like to do with their friends, how we should treat our friends, how to make a new friend and more!
Building their background and activating their schema helps students connect to the new material we will be learning about.
This slideshow comes in a PDF format that you can bring up on your computer and project right on to your front white board. Super easy and simple for you!
Week One - How To Be a Friend
This is the perfect book to start your Friendship unit with your kiddos as it is an adorable guide to making friends and keeping them. This week we will be learning about how to be a good friend and how to NOT be a friend.
We learn about who can be your friend and activities to play with friends (versus activities to do by yourself). Another excellent read aloud for your library this week is How Do Dinosaurs Play With Their Friends?
I show students these adorable “I Can” posters about how to be a good friend.
I love having students practice saying them to encourage positive behavior.
You can hang these up in your classroom and have students practice reading them throughout the unit.
I refer to the posters when I see students being a good friend too.
For example, “I love seeing how Carly can be a good friend because she is sharing her crayons with Kyle.”
These cards are perfect for pocket charts. We read them and sort them as “What a good friend does” and “What a friend does not do."
Then students can color and complete the cut/paste sorting activity where they cut out the pictures and sort them under the correct heading.
Then they can trace the words under each heading.
When I see certain behaviors from students, I can now say, “Are you being a good friend by ________?” and students immediately know what I am talking about. They can complete the writing activity shown above as well finishing the sentence starter, “A good friend _______. A good friend does not __________.”
We then talk about all the different kinds of things we can do with our friends, and activities we can do by ourselves.
The children love to share things they enjoy doing with their friends.
We look at the picture cards and discuss the activities.
I ask students, “Would you do this activity by yourself, or with a friend?”
It really gets them thinking about what they do with their friends and by themselves throughout the day.
I used to be surprised by kids asking me, “Who can I be friends with?” or “Where do I find a friend?”
I made these cards to show students that friends are all around us! They can be friends with whoever they want.
Lastly, I introduce our friendship social stories.
Seven are included in this unit, and we actually use and refer to them throughout the entire month, but this week we read the Feeling Welcome social story and Inviting Someone.
These are social skills that set the foundation of friendships, so they are a terrific tool to start with.
Week 2 - Peanut Butter and Cupcake
Have you read this book? Oh my goodness… you are in for a treat! This book is absolutely adorable and totally hilarious.
Peanut Butter is talking to egg, and egg laughs and says, “You’re cracking me up!”
Hamburger is walking the dog ( a hot dog.) Some of the humor I have to stop and explain/discuss with my kiddos, and then when they get it they are just laughing and laughing right along with me.
Seriously.. its so much fun!
Peanut Butter is new in town and wants to make new friends.
He tries to become friends with Hamburger, Cupcake, Egg, Meatball and French Fries before he finally meets JELLY. And… well you can guess what happens!
I love this story because after we are done reading and giggling, we really dive deep into talking about how to make people feel welcome, how to make a new friend, qualities of a good friend and even how we could make a new student feel welcome in our classroom.
I have so many fun activities planned out to get along with this read aloud (and a freebie for you too!)
Students absolutely love the activity where they have to figure out which foods/objects would make good friends.
I use this activity to talk about how friends can be so different from each other, but that’s okay because friends help each other and make each other better.
After we match the picture cards, they can complete the cut and paste activity.
Anytime I talk about my own personal life my kids don’t move a muscle and listen to every word I say, so I take this opportunity to explain that my husband is my best friend but we are so different (their eyes are wide and staring at this point!)
I tell them that is why we work so well together. He is really good at fixing repairs on the house and cooking. I, on the other hand, am not very good at cooking, but I am good at cleaning. So I wash his clothes and clean the house, and he cooks me dinner! Friends help each other and work together, even if they are different.
I ask them to brainstorm how they help their friends, and if their friends ever help or teach them something.
Next we talk about Cupcake in the story. Was Cupcake acting friendly towards Peanut Butter?
I tell them they get to be Cupcake, and we are adding friendly sprinkles! We talk about the vocabulary words on each sprinkle and what they mean.
What does it mean to be a helpful friend? A kind friend? An honest friend? A thoughtful friend? A caring friend? A fun friend?
Then students color their cupcake, cut out the sprinkles and glue them. They finish the sentence starter, “I am a good friend because I’m…”
They turn out so cute!
Now that we know characteristics of how to be a good friend, what are some ways to make new friends? We discuss what Peanut Butter did in the story, and brainstorm our own list. Then students can write and illustrate two ways they could make a new friend.
How cute is the Let’s Be Friends activity?
I tell students friends don’t have to look the same or act the same as them. They cut out and match the little food friends (checkout how adorable little hamburger and ketchup are!) and color the pictures.
We then complete the activity about celebrating differences with our friends. They write what they are good at, and then they write something that their friend is good at.
Here are a few fun filler activities for the week!
Students color the friendly behaviors on the peanut butter slices, and I have my kiddos trained on the Count, Compare and Write activities.
Peanut Butter and Cupcake will be a favorite in your classroom library from now on.
Week 3 - Enemy Pie
Now that we spent the last two weeks building a foundation for what friendship is, how to be a good friend, how to make new friends, etc., we are ready to tackle conflicts with friends.
What is a conflict with friends? How do we deal with conflict? What are some strategies we can use?
Enemy Pie is a fun story that highlights so many of these important topics in a fun story we love reading.
“It was the perfect summer until Jeremy Ross moved down the street.”
The little boy tells the story in first person. He does NOT like Jeremy Ross.
Jeremy lives next door to his best friend Stanley, and Stanley gets invited to Jeremy’s house and he does not.
Jeremy even laughs at him in baseball. Jeremy becomes Enemy #1.
His dad tells him all about making Enemy Pie.
This book is perfect for teaching about conflicts between friends (and strategies on how to deal with them.)
In the end, the boys in the book end up becoming good friends and my kiddos always ask to read it again.
I display this anchor chart of HOW TO SOLVE A CONFLICT.
We role play and practice, and then I read scenario cards and we refer to our anchor chart for ways to deal with the conflict.
Fo example,
“You heard a boy making fun of your friend’s new hat. What would you do?”
“You want to play soccer, but your friend wants to play basketball. What would you do?”
“Two kids say, ‘You can’t play with us!’ What would you do?”
These make excellent whole group or small group activities, and the kids get better and better at dealing with conflicts.
My main suggestion is to have the kids actually role play the cards.
They need to know what it looks like, sounds like and feels like to be in these conflicts, and then to actually solve them.
After students become more confident and capable of solving conflicts with friends, they then get their own Problem Solving Tools activity page.
We complete this all together, but this page also can stay at your “Calm Down Corner” or “Friendship Table” (do you have one of these?) whenever two friends are having a conflict.
I feel like I am arming my kiddos with the tools they need to successfully solve a conflict without me.
The visual works so well for them!
They can then write a sentence about how they might solve the conflict (two differentiated versions are included.)
Now we are ready to make Friendship Pies (that’s right.. Not Enemy Pies… we make Friendship Pies!)
Students cut out and paste the “ingredients” for a good friendship on to their pie and color it.
The ingredients include using kind words, playing fair, including others, helping each other, taking turns, etc.
Two differentiated versions are included - one where they trace the ingredients and one where they can write their own.
These printables coordinate perfectly with the story, and you can practice sequencing and retelling Enemy Pie with the Slice of Sequencing page.
Towards the end of the week, we celebrate with real friendships pies.
Have you seen these little pies at Walmart? Seriously… too cute! And they are only $.50 each.
Your kiddos will be thrilled to choose their own Friendship Pie to enjoy at the end of the week after reading Enemy Pie.
No plates.. less mess! Just let them choose a mini pie and they can eat them while you watch this video about Berenstein Bears and Trouble with Friends.
The video is 11 minutes long (just enough time for your kiddos to eat their friendship pies!) and then when it is over, discuss with students the conflict Sister Bear and her friend had, and what tools/strategies did they use to resolve their conflict?
Week 4 - The Rainbow Fish
This book is perfect for the last week in our unit about friendship. The Rainbow Fish is very proud and bossy, and he is very impressed with himself. He has beautiful rainbow scales and all of the other fish in the sea want one of his scales.
He refuses to share with them.
They invite him to play with them, and he is too smug to even reply.
Rainbow Fish thinks others should like him because of his beauty, and he doesn’t understand that how he treats others matters.
He finally learns to share, and though he is no longer glittery and beautiful as he once was, he now has so many friends and this is what makes him truly happy.
This is such a wonderful read aloud, and I have so many fun activities planned for this last week in our unit.
We review how to be a good friend, and we write about how Rainbow Fish changed his ways and became a good friend to others.
We read and cut out the character traits and discuss how people can learn new skills and they can change.
They glue to words that describe Rainbow fish at the beginning of the story, and then they glue the words that describe him at the end of the story.
Children color and match the fish, and then they can color by sight words. These make easy no prep filler activities, or they also work so well for sub tubs. Just leave the book with these activities and you’re set.
The Count, Compare and Write and writing prompt go perfectly with this week’s theme.
The writing prompt has a picture word bank and sentence starter to help scaffold students. Two versions are included!
Sharing is caring!
How adorable is this activity?
They can decorate their rainbow fish and write about what they share.
These make such cute bulletin board displays.
At the end of this week we are practicing giving compliments.
The fish all love Rainbow Fish’s sparkly, glittery scales. They give him compliments, and Rainbow Fish brushes them off.
So I talk about how compliments should be specific and kind. I teach my kiddos that when someone looks you in the eye and give you a compliment, you look them in the eye and say, “Thank you.”
The picture word bank gives students ideas and specific sentence starters.
I also post the sentence starters in a pocket chart so students can practice giving each other specific, kind compliments.
I also cut up bracelets/tags that say I caught you….
If I “catch” a student doing something specific, I will give them one of these and they can proudly wear them as a bracelet all day. Students can also give them to each other! It is a great way to recognize students who are being a good friend to others.
This concludes our Rainbow Fish week.
Ready to get started teaching friendship and social skills?
“My students absolutely loved this! The game show had my students very engaged. They asked if I could do more lessons like this. 5/5 would buy again!”
“Love this resource!!! The situation cards are amazing and we had a rotation of just using the situation cards and talking about all of the different scenarios that could and do happen!!! Great language building resource!”
FRIENDSHIP FREEBIE!
These adorable Peanut Butter and Cupcake activities are yours for FREE!
They are NOT included in this unit for purchase, so be sure to print them right here.