10 Conflict Resolution Activities for Kids (Classroom & At Home)

Conflict resolution is one of the most important skills we need to master in life. It will help us in the workplace and society in general and in dealing with our friends and family. When it comes to teachers, they can more easily conduct their classroom activities with children, empowering them to be more effectiv.

However, if children also learn conflict-resolution skills, it will bolster and shape their personalities, helping educators perform their tasks even more efficiently. Conflict resolution training for educators is beneficial as a professional skill and can also be translated into a classroom activity for pupils.

Here are ten conflict resolution activities for kids that can be engaged in at home or in the classroom:

1. Role-playing Scenarios

Role-playing is one of the best ways to learn, and if some of the children in your classroom are passionate about performing, it might even help them turn it into a career. It’s important for educators to develop age-appropriate scenarios involving conflicts so that children can learn conflict-resolution skills.

For example, role-playing scenarios can revolve around sharing toys or resolving misunderstandings. This can be fun, playful, and entertaining. While children focus on acting out ways to find solutions for the respective issues at hand, educators can easily supervise and advise them.

Through role-playing, children will learn to understand the implications of conflict better, find ways to resolve it, identify negative feelings in others, and learn to be more attentive to the needs and responses of others.

If conducted properly, role-playing will help children identify challenging scenarios in their lives and motivate them to take different, more efficient actions in dealing with any issues. Teachers can also play roles to help children better understand the lessons. 

This activity can be interactive and rewarding and prepare children for different life scenarios.

2. Feelings Charades

Another fun activity to teach kids conflict resolution skills is to have them pull written emotions from a hat and act them out. In this case, it is important to discuss how feelings might influence behavior during a conflict.

For example, if a child acts out as an angry customer, the child must have a reason to be angry. They might also draw a card that states the issue of why the customer is angry and act the part accordingly. The child playing the customer service agent must approach the situation calmly.

To make the activity even more easy to understand, you can tell the child acting as the angry customer that they are angry simply because they have a toothache before experimenting with other more complex issues.

Here, it’s important to give some advice to the child in the customer agent role on how to handle the situation. Based on how the situation goes, the educator can then explain what each child did well and offer feedback.

This type of activity can help children to identify feelings and emotions. Learning body language is a useful skill in life and one of the pillars of conflict resolution and socialization. 

3. Conflict Resolution Skits

Skits can be a very educational form of teaching conflict resolution skills to children. Divide them into small groups and create short skits. Here, educators can also offer feedback and demonstrate effective and ineffective ways to resolve conflicts.

If certain cartoons contain conflict, children can act it out. You can ask the children what they think about how each character acted in the show and what they could have done better and encourage them to take better actions.

4. Listening Exercises

Active listening is one of the foundations of conflict resolution. If children develop active listening skills, they will learn other conflict-resolution techniques more efficiently. To train their active listening, let one child explain a problem.

Then, ask another child to paraphrase what they heard. Let the children discuss the issue and interfere only when necessary. It is important that children understand each other’s perspectives. 

Since most children are very energetic, their parents most likely do not have time to answer all their questions. This creates a need to be listened to and this can be turned into an advantage while teaching active listening.

Not to mention that our society as a whole has a huge issue when it comes to listening, as most people engage in monologues and not dialogues due to their lack of active listening skills. 

5. Anger Management Techniques

Anger management is another fundamental skill of conflict resolution. Anger is an emotion which can quickly be transmitted to others. However, in conflict resolution, individuals learn how to manage their anger and not let it get in their way when resolving a conflict.

Children must learn that anger is often not a direct emotional response towards them but an issue within the person projecting anger. Teach children anger management techniques suited for their age.

Some techniques include counting to ten, taking deep breaths, and using “I” statements accordingly. If certain children have anger management issues, it is crucial to discover why and address the issues. 

6. Conflict Resolution Posters

An efficient activity to enhance your conflict resolution classes for children is to have them create posters. These posters should illustrate the steps of the conflict resolution process.

For example, the first step is identifying the problem, looking for solutions, and choosing a solution. Children can use illustrations to showcase their understanding of conflict resolution in an artful manner. 

Have children discuss each other’s illustrations and pictures and gauge their learning. Provide feedback only when necessary and encourage further learning.

7. Empathy Building

Conflict resolution is impossible without empathy; children must be encouraged to feel empathy, even when dealing with conflict. Again, role-playing scenarios can effectively show different perspectives and encourage children to understand each other.

Engage kids in activities that foster empathy. Cartoons, movies, and other media can also help showcase empathy and its importance in conflict resolution to society as a whole. 

Let children pick their own stories, emphasizing empathy and its role. Discuss these stories with them to encourage further learning and understanding. 

8. Peer Mediation 

Sometimes, educators can encourage conflict resolution by training older children to serve as peer mediators. They can then guide younger kids through the conflict resolution process. 

This socialization process will further boost the young ones’ emotional intelligence, understanding, empathy, and conflict-resolution skills. The support of their older classmates can boost their confidence and make learning easier while promoting their lessons and points of view. 

Children often like to play with older kids and might be even more attentive to the lessons. Gaining peer recognition will play a crucial role in their motivation.

9. Conflict Resolution Board Games

All children love games and integrating conflict resolution issues into games can further boost their knowledge and understanding of the subjects. Teachers can create incentive games where players navigate through conflict scenarios and practice resolving them.

This type of activity can take place in a class or at home. Children can use these games to play with their close friends or play online using conflict resolution games. Educators can further promote these lessons by encouraging children to talk about conflicts from movies or video games and present them to the class in the form of a story.

It is essential that these stories have a character who solved the conflict in some way and how they did it should be discussed. If the conflict was not resolved, children must be encouraged to talk about how the conflict could have been resolved. This way, teachers can better understand each student’s level of understanding and guide them in learning the basics of conflict resolution. 

10. Conflict Resolution Journaling

Sometimes, children must be encouraged to speak or write about the conflicts they’ve experienced and how those issues were resolved. Discussing direct life experiences can be a great way to foster interest and learning.

The teacher can discuss their own conflicts and how they resolved them to give examples to the children. Of course, the experiences must be easy to understand and not contain inappropriate or difficult-to-understand subjects.

It’s important to create a safe environment \ so that children can more easily discuss their experiences. The parents must give approval as sharing life stories can be considered an invasion of family privacy. 

Conflict Resolution Training for Educators

All educators can benefit from conflict resolution training, mainly because they work in stressful jobs. When a whole school tackles conflict resolution, everyone can reap the benefits.

Conflict resolution training can create a positive, collaborative, and productive learning environment for teachers and students. To learn more, consider working with a conflict resolution coach.

They can train you through online sessions from the comfort of your home. They can help you discover conflict resolution frameworks, model effective communication, incorporate conflict resolution into the curriculum, and address challenging situations.