News and blog

The incredible contribution our partner Vaiko Labui makes to the lives of Lithuanian children was recently recognised by the Prime Minister of Lithuania!

Zippy’s Friends has been introduced into Korea by the Mental Health Welfare Centre in Gwangju, in the south of the country. Caroline Egar visits a lively school in Korea.

Our upcoming training dates for autumn 2018 are below. If you can’t see one in your area, please look at our list of Licensed Trainers and contact them directly to arrange a training.

As an educational psychologist I have always been aware of how an individual’s early life and in particular their attachment experiences impact on their cognitive, social and emotional development.

The Zippy’s Friends programme in Panama has transcended school classrooms and has become a way to involve teachers, parents, families, whole schools and the community, with everyone cooperating to promote children’s emotional well-being.

10 years ago… Zippy landed in the Republic of Mauritius, a small tropical island in the Indian Ocean. It quickly adapted to the climate! and started its journey in 10 primary schools, meeting 1,045 children and 34 teachers.

The development of thinking skills is an essential life skill for all our children. Consider the journey a child takes as they move from a curious baby to an inquisitive pre-schooler, moving to an experimenting reception child, into a questioning KS1 child, then using their skills as a theorist and researcher in to KS2, ready to move into the next stage of their life. 

In our last newsletter in Summer 2017 we asked for your feedback on running Zippy’s Friends and Apple’s Friends. We received feedback from over 70 schools. Such feedback is invaluable and helps us to develop and improve the programme, so many thanks to all those who took the time to complete the survey. All schools were entered into a prize draw.

Here’s something to fill those spare hours(!) over the summer… Download our new Zippy knitting pattern and make your very own Zippy!

School transitions can be an unsettling time for both teachers and pupils and may bring up difficult feelings. To help your new class or current class with the transition to a new year group and teacher, try these Zippy’s Friends and Apple’s Friends ideas at the end or beginning of term:

Ever since Zippy’s Friends was first trialled over 17 years ago, teachers have asked, ‘What’s next?’ After many years and stages of development, Apple’s Friends has been launched as the follow-up programme to Zippy. However, children don’t have to have done Zippy to do Apple – it can be run as a programme by itself.

Zippy’s Friends is now extremely successful and well known in Lithuania, with some 35% of all six to seven year-olds taking part in the programme. But ten years ago, this wasn’t the case at all, and times were tough for our NGO, Vaiko Labui.

When our partners send us their annual reports, we need to have accurate statistics on school, teacher and children numbers. But the bit we enjoy reading most are the stories which tell us, more than numbers, what Zippy and Apple can do for children. Here are a few of the most recent success stories from around the world.

While the main Zippy’s Friends folder has everything you need to teach the programme, don’t forget there are lots of great ideas for extending and enhancing activities in the Inclusion Supplement. These activities have been specially designed to ensure children in your class with special educational needs (SEN) can get the most out of the programme but can be beneficial for the whole class.

Bullying is not only horrible to experience, but research shows it can have long-term detrimental effects on mental health.

Involving families in Zippy’s Friends and Apple’s Friends is a great way to help children to use their new skills outside the classroom.

The first modules of Zippy’s Friends and Apple’s Friends focus on feelings. For young children, learning about feelings is a key skill that will help them to manage their emotions and ask for help when needed.

There are lots of things you can do to set the tone before your first Zippy class. Many schools add an extra session (session 0) to introduce the characters, the rules and show that Zippy classes will be different from other lessons.