Friendship Game For Preschool

This month we are learning more about friendship. I say more because in every lesson, I try to include the social-emotional skills that friendship requires. Things like modeling listening, having conversations, taking turns, patience, and learning about emotions are daily tasks in my, and I am sure your classroom. Even over zoom and with remote learning, we can promote this with everything we do. However, as we get closer to Valentine’s Day, I am putting a special focus on friendship. This is tricky with a fully remote class like I have, but instead of deciding it’s impossible, I got to work. Since I send home activities for my students, I decided to make a friendship game for my students. It’s a simple game that parents don’t have to be taught, and it’s just memory but with their classmates’ names and faces! I hope this helps to build more community, a sense of belonging, and of course, also help them learn each other’s names so if /when we are in person, we are already a cohesive class.

Here is how I made it and how to play this friendship game.

I used Canva.com to make a printable with all my students’ faces and names. This is an example with stock photos for the blog, not my students. I put all their faces and names in squares, then saved it as a pdf. Each student will get two copies of the memory game. If you are not comfortable with graphic design, you can get actual photos, tape them onto a paper in a grid, write their names and make two copies per student using a photocopier.

Cut into squares.

How To Play

Place all the squares face down on a table.

Fip two over. The adult should name the child if the student doesn’t. If they are a match, match them up and set them aside if they are not matching, flip back over.