What many children look most forward to about school is playtime with their friends.
Learning how to be a friend, and how to make friends, is an essential ingredient in an early childhood classroom. Children’s socio-emotional development is perhaps more important than any other as their future happiness and success will depend upon it. Happy kids learn more easily than unhappy kids.
The importance of developing a warm, welcoming, supportive, inclusive classroom environment cannot be overstated. Many readilearn classroom management resources assist teachers with this, and I have previously suggested ways of helping children get to know each other, including using class surveys and the Me and my friends worksheets to discover their similarities and differences.
In this post, I suggest strategies that can be used to help children develop friendship skills.
Continue reading: Making friends – Readilearn
Norah Colvin 
A fabulous friendship acrostic! Sharing… )
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Thank you, Bette. Much appreciated. 🙂
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I love the friendship skills poster💝
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Thanks Luccia. 🙂
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You hit the nail on the head, Norah. Social and emotional skills come first, before cognitive learning. It’s so important. Thank you for a great post.
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Thank you, Jennie. I knew you’d agree! 🙂
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🙂
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Thanks Norah,
for the WEE mention regarding my Author spotlight interview next Friday for the National Day Against Bullying and Violence. Can’t wait to read the article in “print”… cheers, Karen 🙂
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Thanks, Karen. I’m looking forward to it also. It seems to have been a long time in the making, but definitely worth waiting for. 🙂
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“Learning how to be a friend, and how to make friends…” Easier said than done and I’m so glad you’ve addressed this. I daresay this (tweaked a bit) could be used for adults. I’m not being fresh, I’m serious. I think I’ve mentioned this before but some of your ideas, such as this one, are applicable to many age groups. Think about this for the workplace. What a difference that could make.
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Sarah, I think you’re right, many adults could use this too.
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I agree. I can think of a few workplaces where a reminder wouldn’t have been out of place. It may have gone unheeded though.
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