Zippy’s Friends is a school based social emotional learning programme for 5-7 year olds. The programme is taught to the whole class by teachers trained in Zippy’s Friends in the UK and internationally. At St Thomas', we teach Zippy's Friends in Year 2 in addition to the Discovery Education programme.
The programme was developed jointly by Partnership for Children, academics and educational resources specialists. The stories were written by Liz Swinden and the original illustrations created by Maggie Guillon. Zippy’s Friends has been running around the world since 1998 and is now in over 30 countries.
The fundamental concept behind the programme is very simple – if we can teach young children how to cope with difficulties, they should be better able to handle problems and crises in adolescence and later life. Zippy’s Friends has been evaluated and found to improve children’s coping skills, social skills, emotional literacy, improve the class climate and reduce bullying. Read more about the evaluation studies of Zippy’s Friends.
Zippy’s Friends is based around a series of stories and the programme has 24 sessions of 45 minutes.
The six modules cover:
Children develop their own positive strategies to deal with problems through engaging activities: listening to stories, discussion, games, role-play and drawing.