Our inquiry into where we belong has led us to explore the importance of friendships. We agree that friendships are an important part of feeling like we belong at school. The children have identified that to be a good friend the following are needed:

• kindness
• respect
• honesty
• trust
• patience
• love

Some children describe friendship as a warm feeling and feeling safe. Another child described it as a rainbow of colourful feelings. We are having some wonderful and increasingly thoughtful conversations about fixing friendships when things go wrong and accepting that we can be friends with people who like different things to us.

Reading the story of Charlotte’s Web and then watching the movie led us to discuss the power of the words we use when we talk to our friends and how we must think carefully about what we say and how it might make our friends feel.

One child’s representation of their thinking around what friendship looks like – “It is a rainbow of feelings. There are your close friends where you feel safe and then other friends. It’s like circles. And then there are the people that are waiting to be your friends, or who you want to be friends with”

 “This is a friendship heart”    

Some of our colourful and delicious looking cakes and added the important ingredients.