Friendship booklets – An Early Finisher Activity

Do you have the same early finishers in your classroom? This past year, I did. I was regularly looking for an activity to give them. As they were good friends, the idea of friendship booklets came to mind. I had recently created booklets to do with our buddy class. If you want to see that booklet, you can check out the post, Do You Have A Buddy Class. It had turned out so well, I wondered how I could expand the booklet idea. Hence, friendship booklets.

Use As An Early Finisher Activity

As mentioned, this idea came from trying to find an early finishers activity that I didn’t have to spend too much time on. I have already trained my students to get their colouring pages from a binder. So I printed and cut all the pages and placed them in a big binder. Students can choose the pages they want to complete. The work can go in their “Early Finishers folder“.

The booklets are half size, to save some paper. I had to add little stickers to the page protectors as it made it easier for me to find certain pages. I might also print the table of contents this school year. The challenge was when students would pull out a page and then put back the page in a random spot. I’ll keep working on training them for that. The students were “trained” to tell me when they took the last copy. That was something I had to do with the colouring binders.

Friendship Booklets As Part of a Friends/Community Unit

I didn’t create these for a unit but it would make sense to include them in a unit. Given all the crazy stuff from the pandemic, I’m finding many students have lost the skills and grit to do stuff. The past couple years, even addressing, “how to be a friend” has been a continual discussion. It has always been an issue in my teaching career, but I’m finding the need for constant dialogues and role-playing all the more now.

Are you finding that you have to mediate problems after a recess or lunch break?

Just thinking aloud, I’m considering starting the year with a friendship unit. I haven’t done it for a while or it’s often done in February. But it’s kind of late. I had a few students this year who didn’t have someone to play with at recess and lunch break. Maybe I need to create more friendship building activities…

Hence the creation of this booklet.

This is a half and half booklet, just like the All About Me & My Buddy booklet. I print them off and put them in a binder for easy storage.

As we read a few friendship books through the year, this ties in perfectly. Some of my favourite friendship books are:

• Stick and Stone, by Beth Ferry

• My Friend is Sad, by Mo Willems

• Enemy Pie, by Derek Munson

• My Best Friend, by Julie Fogliano

• Do Unto Otters, by Laurie Keller

• My Best Friends, by Leilani Sparrow

• My Best Friend, Sometimes, by Naomi Danis

Start As A Whole Class Activity

After reading a couple books, I met with each student briefly to find out their friends in the class. Almost all of them have at least one friend. I paired them up ahead of time and front loaded the activity. Each student knew that the booklet could be done with a variety of friends or the same friend, their choice.

I choose an easy page (see below). As it is a half/half booklet, I give one to each student and then they can complete both pages, allowing each friend to have a page. I also created pages so that students could put their friend’s name (more personal).

Here are some finished ones. I did a couple ‘online’.

I’m going to continue playing with this unit. I think friendship can be taught all year round as interactions happen all the time. How do you approach friendship talks in your class? Do you use picture books? Units? If you would like to purchase this, you can find it here.

Happy Teaching!

Lori-Anne