20 Friendship Day Activities That are Perfect for Preschoolers 

Parents are a child’s first friends, offering comfort and encouragement. But as toddlers step into preschool, they start having their first friendships outside the family. For toddlers, being a friend can mean sharing a toy or saving a seat, and these small gestures help build trust, communication, and emotional strength. The skills that toddlers learn through friendships form a strong foundation for healthy future relationships.

That’s why Friendship Day holds an important meaning even for our littlest learners. Celebrating this day with friendship activities for pre-schoolers is a chance to celebrate the joy and also the life skills that grow from it. And what better place to begin this journey than in preschool, where children often experience friendship for the very first time!

Key takeaways

1. Friendship Day celebrations in preschool prepare children for life beyond the classroom, equipping them with the emotional tools they’ll use in school, college, the office, and future relationships.
2. Celebrations, including friendship day activities for preschool, help even shy children bond through fun and play, creating an engaging environment where every child can open up and connect.
3. Friendship activities teach toddlers empathy, kindness, and cooperation, helping them understand others’ feelings and learn how to study, work, and interact together peacefully.
4. Every child deserves to feel seen, included, accepted, and valued in a social group, and these Friendship Day celebrations in preschool ensure that no child feels left out during early social experiences.
5. Friendship day games boost communication, confidence, and self-expression, giving young children the chance to talk, listen, and express their thoughts freely.
6. Early friendships lay the foundation for lifelong social skills, encouraging children to initiate relationships and handle social situations with confidence and ease.

20 Friendship Day Activities for Preschoolers

At KLAY we celebrate the bond of friendship with fun friendship day activities and friendship day games, helping toddlers express appreciation for their friends. For those who find it harder to connect, KLAY offers an inclusive friendship day activity for preschoolers to help them feel confident and included.

1. The Matching Game

Materials required: Colour blocks

One of the easiest friendship activities for preschoolers is the matching colour games. Encourage the kids to pick a colour block and match it with someone wearing the same colour. It is a playful way to encourage social-emotional and speaking skills.

2. Call Game

Form two teams of children and let them hold hands. The teams take turns calling classmates to run over and break their chain. It helps with name recall and keeps them active.

3. Pictionary

Divide the class into two teams. Give simple words like tree, apple, ball to the children. One team member has to draw the object on the board while the remaining team members guess what it means. This game encourages communication, creativity, and teamwork while helping children build vocabulary, motor skills, and confidence through play.

4. Me Too

Every child takes a turn to share a fact about themselves, like their favourite colour or food, and others, when they have the same favourites, shout “Me too!” It’s exciting and energetic, which encourages speaking and logical skills, and connections over common likes.

5. Say Compliments

Make kids sit in a circle and take turns giving compliments to classmates based on their nature. Such friendship day team activities help in developing speech in children and as they try and express, they also feel included and bonded with their peers.

6. Fingerprint characters

Materials required: Paint and paper

Let toddlers dip their fingers in paint and stamp colourful thumbprints on paper. Teachers can turn them into tiny characters, one for each child. This group activity is a fun way for toddlers to include others and express themselves.

7. Friendship Chain

Materials required: Paper strips and paint

Give each child a paper strip to paint. Turn the strips into loops. Interconnect the loops to make it into a colourful chain. This simple art and craft for Friendship Day activity teaches teamwork and peer bonding. The chain can also be used as classroom decor, a cheerful reminder of friendship activities for preschoolers.

8. Treasure Hunt

Materials required: Picture cards and their corresponding items.

Hold up a picture card. Group kids into pairs and let them search for the item on the card in the class. This activity is one of the fun friendship activities for preschoolers that teaches them to work in teams, communicate, and make friends through playing.

9. Show and Tell

Materials required: Favourite toy

Make the toddlers sit in a circle. Each child takes a turn to show their favourite toy and tell something about it to the class like “My toy’s name is Teddy” or “Teddy likes eating food with me”. This group activity supports building confidence and communication skills.

10. Musical Handkerchief

Materials required: Handkerchiefs

Give a fun twist to musical chairs. Place the handkerchiefs to form a circle. There should be one fewer handkerchief than the total number of kids. Let kids walk around them as music plays. When it stops, they rush to sit on a handkerchief, sometimes sharing it while bumping into each other. This fun game encourages bonding with classmates through laughter and social interaction.

11. That’s Me

Materials required: Animal, fruit, toys, picture cards

Place all picture cards in a basket. Each child should pick a card, and when the teacher calls out, ‘Who loves bananas?’ or ‘Who has a teddy like this?’ the child with the matching card jumps up and says, “That’s me!” This game helps the kids in learning new words, and increasing attention, and group participation.

12. Row Your Boat

Encourage toddlers to pair up and sit facing each other and rock their bodies back and forth like a boat. Let the children sing rhymes while rowing their boat. These energetic friendship activities for preschoolers helps to build teamwork, motor skills, and coordination.

13. Copycat

Let the children stand in a circle. Each toddler takes turns doing a dance move or funny expression while others must copy the same. This playful activity makes everyone chuckle, relieving anxiety while promoting group participation and inclusion.

14. Story Time

Materials required: Children’s story book

Host a story telling session, reading stories from books like Panchatantra, Tenali Rama, or Akbar-Birbal. These stories spark chats about friendships, kindness, and sharing. While reading, ask children how they relate their friendships to the stories. These conversations-based activities build listening skills, logical thinking, empathy, and self-expression.

15. Friendship Tree

Materials required: Individual photos of students, a box and glue

Fill a box full of photos. Ask toddlers to pick a random classmate’s photo and stick it on a big tree cut-out. This activity helps kids feel included and make new friends. This helps toddlers to build new relationships with others, have a positive attitude, and decision-making skills.

16. Good Friend Cards

Materials required: Visual discrimination cards

Share visual cards that show illustrated answers to questions like “Who is being a good friend?” or “What are the habits of a good friend?” Let children look at picture cards and decide if the action shown is friendly or not. It is a simple way to teach kindness, emotions, critical thinking, and social awareness.

17. Role-Play

In this game, let kids act out real-life friendship scenarios, for example, helping a sad friend, welcoming a new friend, or saying sorry. This friendship day activity for preschool builds empathy in kids. It makes them think logically and solve the situation accordingly.

18. Passing the Pillow

Materials required: A pillow

In this game, the teacher asks simple questions like “Who is your best friend?” or “Say something nice about a friend.” The child holding the pillow answers, then passes it to another classmate. This playful activity helps toddlers practice turn-taking, listening, and expressing themselves, while increasing attention span and positive social confidence.

19. Music and Movement

Have the children stand in a circle and play cheerful nursery songs like ‘Humpty Dumpty’, ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ or the alphabet song. Let them move, dance, and sing along freely with others. This activity helps kids to feel more connected to their classmates through songs, dance, and coordination.

 20. Friendship Flower

Materials required: Paint, paper, and scissors

Let each child dip their hand in colourful paint and press it onto paper. Once dry, the handprints are cut out and turned into ‘friendship flowers’. Let each child gift their flower to a friend, someone they have played with, helped, or simply like spending time with. It is a cute way to express appreciation, gratitude, and individualism.

Importance of Developing Friendships at a Young Age

Children who develop friendship at a young age are better at understanding their own feelings and others. The above-described friendship activities for preschoolers make sure that children learn confidence, kindness, and the ability to bounce back from tough situations.

Here is how friendships at young age affect children:

Social Skills Development

Childhood friendships help kids learn how to share, take turns, cooperate, and handle conflicts. These early social skills prepare them to navigate relationships later in life.

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

Preschool friendships help children understand others’ feelings and build empathy. These early interactions boost emotional intelligence and support healthy relationships.

Self-confidence

Healthy friendships build a child’s confidence and self-worth. Feeling accepted by peers encourages them to try new things and develop a strong, positive self-image.

Language and Communication Skills

Spending time with friends helps children improve language and speech skills. They learn to express themselves, take turns talking, and use both words and gestures to share ideas.

Conflict Resolution Skills

Friendships often come with small disagreements, giving children a chance to learn how to handle conflicts calmly and find middle ground. These moments help build necessary problem-solving skills for life.

Cultural Awareness

When preschool friendships develop between children from different backgrounds, it helps them learn about other cultures, traditions, and ways of thinking. It helps build understanding, inclusivity, tolerance, and respect for diversity.

Imagination and Creativity

When preschoolers engage in pretend games or role-play with their peers, it encourages them to think creatively and explore new ideas through play. Creativity and imagination peaks when children make up their own games and rules to play.

Reduction of Anxiety and Stress

Having friends around can help preschoolers feel less anxious and stressed. Their presence offers comfort and a sense of security, especially in unfamiliar or new environments.

Preparation for School and Beyond

Friendship activities for preschoolers helps children develop key social skills that are important not just for school, but for life beyond the classroom, which is adult life.

KLAY believes that preschool is where the foundation of lifelong friendships begins. Our warm, inclusive environment encourages children to express themselves, connect with peers, and feel a strong sense of belonging. Through everyday interactions and thoughtfully designed activities, we help children build the social and emotional skills that support meaningful relationships.