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August 1st is National Friendship Day: A whole day devoted to showing our love to the people around us. What could be a better thing to celebrate with your little one? It’s important to help your child recognize their friendships as vital and beautiful. Their social development depends on their ability to relate to peers and others outside their family unit. They also benefit immensely from the emotional support of these exterior relationships, which help them view the world as a mostly positive place where more people are willing to help them than hurt them. Why not try out these fun-packed, do-at-home activities to appreciate all the special friendships in your child’s life?
Why is Friendship So Important for Kids?
You know it’s important for your child to have friends, but why? There are a host of mental and emotional developments that regular socialization and forming bonds with other children help to hasten. Friendships teach vital life skills such as conflict resolution and problem solving. They also improve your child’s self-esteem by fostering a sense of belonging which can also lead to greater community awareness in the future. From teaching everyday rules of politeness and social discourse to allowing for the development of interests and imagination, the benefits of positive friendships in childhood abound.
Friendship Day Crafts to Help Your Child Celebrate!
Friendship High Fives
This simple craft needs very few supplies and is accessible to kids of all ages. All you need is some construction paper, scissors, or markers. Your child will create a tracing of their hand, adding a personal touch, and decorate it with the name of their friend on the palm and all the reasons their friend deserves a high-five on the fingers! It makes an excellent gift and is conveniently sent through the mail. Help your child build strong friendships by morally supporting their friends with thoughtful gifts like these “high-fives” from Simple Play Ideas.
Friendship Flowers
This post from Coffee and Carpool includes a firsthand account of the author’s child’s bond with the best friend, and a great example of how kids can learn to cope with tension and disappointments in relationships by focusing on the things they love about a person. It also includes helpful instructions on how to make paper flowers to give as gifts! Kids will love this easy craft which provides them with a creative outlet as well as a gift for their best friend! This craft is another which only requires construction paper, scissors, and markers. Your child will write their friend’s name on the center of the flower, and all the unchanging, unique qualities your kid loves about their friend will go on the petals!
Friendship Bracelets
A friendship bracelet is a classic gift that never goes out of style. Crafty kids will love the excitement of picking out their friends’ favorite colors of embroidery floss or yarn and making a personalized bracelet for each of them. Even the process of making the bracelets is a team activity, as one person can braid the yarn or embroidery floss while the other holds it! This imbues the bracelet with the fond memory of time spent together, which your child can access any time just by looking at it! Check out DLTK Kids for a step-by-step guide on how to make these timeless treasures.
Social Storybooks
A social storybook is a type of children’s picture book that focuses on a social scenario to reinforce social and interpersonal skills in children. The stories feature short sentences describing simple photos or illustrations. This post by Inner Child Fun encourages you to use photos of your child with their friends to create their own social storybook. Find pictures of your child sharing positive moments with their friends and caption them with applicable statements about what a good friendship looks like. Examples include: “Friends share.”, “Friends try new things together.”, “Friends tell jokes.”, etc. You can make these books on the computer in These storybooks will capture memories of your child’s happy times with friends for years to come.
Roll the Jar Paintings
Want a fun and engaging way to teach your toddler to take turns? What to emphasize the value of teamwork by rewarding them with a completed craft? Why not try this “Roll-The-Jar” painting tutorial from Teaching Two and Three Year Olds? You’ll need a jar, a few marbles, some washable, non-toxic finger paint, and the printout included in the article. Your toddler will take turns rolling the jar across the floor to their friend, stimulating both their motor and sensory growth, as well as their creativity.
Friendship Collage Art
Crafting together with a friend can capture the joy of a shared experience on paper. For this craft by Hello, Wonderful, you’ll need just a few supplies: paper, a range of flesh-colored paint, scissors, markers, and anything else you may want to decorate with. Your child will work together with their friend to match paint to their respective skin tones and trace each other’s arms on painted and dry paper. Then, they can create a collage of them and their friend holding hands, with a heart in-between! This craft is simple, fun, totally customizable, and it inspires teamwork too!
80’s Inspired Friendship Pins
The 80’s are coming back! Early teens, tweens, and older kids will love feeling stylish while sporting their handmade friendship pins. As with many of the other gifts on this list, these are intended to be exchanged as gifts! There are some special supplies required, but nothing too difficult to attain. All you need are some safety pins; small, colored beads; and alphabet beads. Your child can spell out messages to their friend such as, “BFFS”, or, “FAM”, using the alphabet beads, and decorate either end with whatever beads they choose! See the full instructions on Kitchen Counter Chronicle to start making these fashionable badges of friendship.
We hope you’ve enjoyed these recommendations to help you celebrate International Friendship Day on August 1st. You can always visit the Wondrfly blog for more tips, tricks, and parenting hacks to make any day a little brighter!
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