Pets and Friendship Activities and Crafts
Pets and Friends activities, crafts, and printables
February is the month of hugs and kisses. It's the perfect time to celebrate and honor our friends and the members of our families, including our pets. Whether it's a dog, a cat, a bird, a lizard, or a horse, for many children, the family pet is their best friend—a companion who not only provides unconditional love, but who also teaches them about friendship, responsibility, loyalty, and empathy. Children celebrate the joys of making and having friends in this month's friendship theme. They engage in sharing and caring activities, games, songs, rhymes, literature, and snacks. and printables that we’ve created for our KidsSoup Resource Library.
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Activities
Friendship Lessons and Activities:
Literacy Activity: The Perfect Pet
Healthy Facts and Tips
Research shows that living with pets provides certain health benefits.
- Contrary to popular belief, recent studies suggest that kids growing up in a home with "furred animals" will have less risk of allergies and asthma.
- Walking or playing with a dog or other pet provides exercise.
- Another recent study suggests that pets help to bring families closer together, reducing conflict and tension and increasing play among family members.
- Pets help to teach kids responsibility, nurturing, compassion, loyalty, and empathy.
Activity: Where Is the Pet? Rhyming and Spatial Words
What you do:
Objectives:
Children will identify rhyming words.
Children will understand and use language of space.
Where Is the Pet?
The bunny is in the honey.
The dog is behind a log.
The mouse is in the house.
The cat is under the hat.
The snake is in the lake.
The red bird is third.
The rat is on the mat.
The fish is next to the dish.
Literacy Activity: The Perfect Pet
What you need:
- Book:
What you do:
The Perfect Pet by Margie Palatini is an amusing story about a girl named Elizabeth who tries to convince her parents that she should have a pet. As Elizabeth lists the advantages of each animal, requesting everything from a horse to a rat, her parents find reasons to reject each one. Elizabeth eventually solves her problem by adopting a bug as a pet.
Before reading The Perfect Pet, ask children about the different pets that they have. Make a class graph with pictures or names of different types of pets at the top (dog, cat, lizard, bird, rabbit, snake, fish, horse, etc.
Activity: Our Friends Names
What you need:
- Small Hearts printable
- Our Friends Name Matching Activity Cover Sheet
- Sentence strips
- Black marker
- Photo of each child
- Two-pocket folder
- Two 5 x 7 manila envelopes
- Scissors
- Glue
What you do:
Write the names of each child on a sentence strip and place on the board. Let each child find his/her name and take it off the board. Let the child name the first letter and its sound of his/her name. Sing the following song “A Friend I See” and the child with the name smiles and holds up its name. Then stands up, turns around and sits down again. At the end let each child place their name back on the board.
Introduce the "Our Friends Names" Folder Game to the children.
Activity: Friendship
What you do:
For some children friendship skills come easily; while others need a little more practice and help. A great way to introduce and learn about friendship is reading books about friendships together. After reading each book, ask children questions like: Why the characters were friends? What made them good friends? How did they become friends? How did they settle arguments?
Movement Activities
Friends at School
Friends at school
Are big and small.
Friends at school
Are best of all!
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