The Buddy Bench

While I was on my second practicum at a kindergarten, I noticed there was some bullying happening between some of the girls. These girls were calling another girl nasty names and not letting her play with them. When she went over to play the girl's would just walk away and tell her they did not want to be friends with her. This girl who wanted to play would walk away upset that she thought she had no one to play with. As I noticed this I spoke to my AT about how she handles situations like this; my AT replied by saying she had not noticed this happening before. My AT and I spoke to the other teachers about it, their response was the same, none of them had noticed it. Because of this we talked about ways we could encourage the children to be inclusive and allow any child that wanted to play with a group were able to play with them. We came up with an idea called 'The Buddy Bench', the idea behind this was if you did not have any one to play with you go sit on the bench, when one of the other children noticed someone sitting on the bench it was their job to invite the child sitting on the bench to join in on the game they were playing. 

'The Buddy Bench' seemed to work well and it also encouraged the children to be inclusive in the playground at kindergarten. 

Below I have added a link that explain the whole 'Buddy bench' concept and how it has been working in schools: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr-IrvjyaAU

References:

Buddy Bench [Photograph]. (2015). Retrieved October 2015, from http://buddybench.org/2014/10/09/gray-academy-jewish-education/

Olsen, G,. (2014). Eight year old Clare creates Buddy Bench to stop Bullying. Retrieved October 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr-IrvjyaAU