Programme Information

Zippy's Friends for 5-7 year olds



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.

The programme was developed jointly by Partnership for Children, academics and educational resources specialists and 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. You can read more about the evaluation studies of Zippy’s Friends on our main website.

Zippy’s Friends is based around a series of stories and the programme has 24 sessions of 45 minutes.

The six modules cover:

      • Feelings
      • Communication
      • Friendship
      • Conflict
      • Change and Loss
      • Moving forward

Children develop their own positive strategies to deal with problems through engaging activities: listening to stories, discussion, games, role-play and drawing.

The activities and stories are suitable for children of all abilities. Teachers can use the Additional Activities as extra activities alongside the main programme or as a follow on programme for the second year to consolidate and practice the coping skills learned in Zippy's Friends.

There are Home Activities to reinforce learning at home with parents or carers.

Become a Zippy’s Friends Teacher

Our Skills for Life programmes are only available to those who have been specially trained to deliver them. After completing the live online training (2.5 hours), you can purchase a subscription to all the digital teaching and learning materials for the programmes – ready to use in the classroom, or purchase a physical folder with all lessons plans, stories and Illustrations and Activity Sheets to photocopy for the pupils. If you are interested in teaching Zippy’s Friends to your class, book onto our online Skills for Life training. 

Skills For Life PSHE Mapping 

See how our programmes meet all elements of the Mental Wellbeing requirements  of the statutory guidance for Relationships and Health Education for primary schools in England and support many others. 


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