We are continuing our friendship-themed activities with a story by Mo Willems. The book is Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems. It follows Gerald the elephant’s decision on whether he should share his delicious ice cream cone with Piggie or eat it himself. By the time Gerald finally decides to share, the ice cream has melted. Luckily Piggie comes to the rescue and the pair share Piggie’s ice cream. The story ends with the two friends leaning against each other, happy to show one another that they are loved and feel loved in return. As Gerald eventually puts it, “Ice cream is much better when shared.”
Making friends and keeping them is an important life skill. The preschoolers in our family are at the early stages of understanding the complexities of friendship. Inspired by the story, I set up a Friendship Ice Cream Cone Throw game. Each time a child manages to throw an ice cream ball into a cone they have to name one of their friends and say what they like about that person. For a child who has not yet built a wide circle of friends, family members and pets count. Grandparents, cousins, the dog. The point of the game is to practice noticing what makes someone good company. I reach for it when a child is anxious about a new-friend situation, or in the first weeks of a school year when classes are reshuffled and friendships are still forming.
We have played this with different kids and different ages since 2016. A handful of small adjustments along the way have made a real difference, and they are folded into the version below.
What it looks like at different ages. Two-year-olds mostly squish the balls and tip the cones over, which is fine, count it as a successful round. Three- and four-year-olds throw cheerfully and need help finding a friend’s name. Five-year-olds run the basic friendship rule on their own. Kindergartners and up can handle Friendship Tic Tac Toe with little supervision.
Resources needed for Friendship Ice Cream Cone Throw
- Twelve plastic golf balls
- Red, yellow and brown permanent marker pens
- Nine ice cream cup cones (with flat bases, not pointed waffle cones). I started with paper cones, and a quick note from years of playing this game: paper cones tear after about three rounds of being knocked over. The heavier cardboard ones from craft shops last much longer, and small disposable cups turned upside down work just as well if that is what you have.
- A box lid (optional, to hold the cones upright)
How to set up Friendship Ice Cream Cone Throw
Take your permanent marker pens and color in the plastic golf balls. I made three red balls (to represent strawberry ice cream), three yellow balls (banana ice cream) and three brown balls (chocolate ice cream). I left three balls plain white to represent vanilla ice cream.
I placed nine ice cream cup cones into the lid of a box. It is important that you use cup cones, as they have a flat base. The cones fit securely inside the box lid, which means they do not fall over during the game. We rested the box lid on a low tree stump so the activity sat at the right throwing height.
How to play Friendship Ice Cream Cone Throw
There are several ways to play with the ice cream cones. As a basic game the child takes a pretend ice cream ball, stands back from the cones and tries to throw the ball into a cone. If it lands inside the cone they have to name a friend and explain why that person is a good friend. For example, “Max is my friend because he plays trains with me.”
The game requires the child to focus on hand-eye coordination, motor planning and gross motor skills, as well as thinking about what it means to be friends with someone. The throwing arc covers visual-motor integration. The missed-and-try-again rhythm builds bilateral coordination. The naming-a-friend rule maps to two of the social-emotional competencies the CASEL framework treats as core, self-awareness and relationship skills, which is a clean curriculum hook for teachers running this in a classroom.
The first few rounds usually surface the same compliments (nice, kind, funny). When that happens I follow up with a question, “What did they do today that was kind?” or “Tell me about a time they made you laugh.” Specific compliments stick. Generic ones bounce off. What this is doing under the surface is asking the child to take the friend’s perspective for a moment. Psychologists call that theory of mind. Most people call it empathy.
Alternative versions
Throw a Compliment. In this game you play with a friend. Each person takes it in turn to throw the ball into the cone. As the ball lands, give your friend a compliment. Tell them why they are a good friend and what qualities you admire about them.
Friendship Tic Tac Toe. Each friend chooses one set of colored balls. Take it in turns to throw a ball and pass a compliment. This time, the object is to get three of the same colored balls in a line. It is certainly easier said than done.
Stations for a bigger group. The game scales beyond a single child. For a classroom or playgroup of six or eight, set up two trays at opposite ends of a room and rotate kids in pairs. Each pair plays a round of three throws, then swaps. The talking happens between rounds, not during the throwing, which keeps it manageable when the room gets noisy.
The quiet version. For a child who is overwhelmed by the throwing-and-talking energy, drop the ball into the cone from a few inches above instead of throwing, and whisper the name of the friend rather than calling it out. Same activity, lower temperature. This works well for sensory-seeking children who still benefit from the friendship-naming rule but find loud rooms hard to think in.