November 4, 2021August 15, 2026 by joels

Friendship Growing Cards ~ social skills game to teach friendship skills for children with ASD

Growing-Friendship-Cards-Printable-version Download

Growing-Friendship-Cards-On-screen-versionDownload

This resource in German: Karten für wachsende Freundschaften

This social skills card game is designed to help children with autism to explore friendship. It can be used in a variety ways. You can print out the friendship social skills cards and use them with dice in a social skills game or you can use them in an unstructured Q & A format. A separate download allows you to skip printing the cards and instead display them on a computer, which makes this social skills activity adaptable for teletherapy or classroom use.

The pictures below demonstrate what elements of friendship are represented in the three card categories: Planting friendships, Growing friendships, and Working out problems in friendships.

These 16 cards are all about "planting" friendships.

These 16 cards are all about taking care of the friendships you have started.

These 16 cards are about dealing with friendship problems.

To add a game-like element, you can roll a die to guide card selection from among the three categories, as explained below.

There are different ways to use the cards. It is recommended you try rolling a die to randomly select which of the 3 card piles to select a card from.

These cars were designed for young people with autism. However, they could be used for other young people experiencing basic problems with isolation and peer relations.

In my own use of these cards in social skills groups, I have used the projected version of the Friendship Growing Cards as often as I have employed the printed-out cards. Projected each individual card offers the advantage of allowing all participants to clearly view the card in question.