I am a new manager looking at a brand new topic for the new children in September focussing on friendships. We are going to do hand printing etc but am struggling to think of many ideas suitable for the younger children from age 2. Any help would be fantastic

Have you looked in the resources section under topics... there is one for ourselves which may have some ideas you can use..

many settings no longer use topics but go with the children.. so not sure how many ideas may come forward...

Sorry but 'friendships' may be a bit limiting as a topic for 2 year olds... didn't think they really started making 'friends' and forming friendships until they are older... but it is a long time since I worked with that age group..

we used to do Getting to Know You to start terms... using ourselves type ideas to start with and then moving on as the children became settled..

( as well as the staff.. as it was used every year they knew how to start the Sept and got to know the children really well with this one)

Inge

Hi staceyc

I really struggle when people ask for help with topics - we haven't used them for so long that now I find it difficult to come up with anything meaningful at all.

However, I did just want to welcome you to the Forum - hope you get some good responses to your plea!

Maz

Welcome to the forum! I don't have any great ideas for you I'm afraid since I think friendships is a bit of a tricky concept for such a young group, they might not yet be ready for this stage of social interaction. However you could focus on the 'getting along' side of it, e.g. not hitting, not hurting, not being unkind, sharing, manners etc. Is that what you were thinking? There are lots of nice books around those areas, I'm sure there must be some suitable for 2 year olds and no doubt someone will be able to tell you of them!




From what I remember of my child development course you are right. At this age most children have only reached the stage of parallel play (playing alongside at the same activity but not with each other). Of course being in nursery from such an early age might possibly have accelerated this development in some children, particularly in girls who do tend to develop it much earlier than boys anyway.

Thanks for the replies, think i may have worded this wrong!
We do an opening theme/topic to help children build friendships and develop parallel play skills. We have used hand prints as a simple method in the past. Each child chooses a friend from within the setting (or even a teacher) and they each print a hand print on the same piece of paper to make them look like they are holding hands.
We display these as "hands of friendship" and children often decide to redo these with other friends. We put the childrens names on so parents etc can see the development of new friendships etc throughout the year.

Was just really after similar inspiration or ideas if anybody does anything similar?
We have individual planning as we are lucky enough to have good ratios so dont do set topics anymore but have found this a very usefull tool when lots of new kiddies start in September.