Character Education Books Linky

As I was surfing pinterest and teacher blogs, I found this awesome Linky Party over at First Grade and Fabulous and just had to join in the fun!  I love books and at the beginning of the year I am always looking for great picture books that reinforce character education lessons. 

 My favorite might be the book Have You Filled A Bucket Today by Carol McCloud.  If you have not read this book, you need to check it out for sure.  It is a wonderful book all about treating each other with kindness.  It shows kids (and adults) that we all have an invisible bucket that gets filled or "dipped" into by our actions.  There are some fantastic lessons to go along with bucket filling and I have even used it in my classroom as a behavior plan before!  Check out the book and my board on pinterest for more info.

Another great book for character education is My Mouth is a Volcano by Julia Cook.  This is a funny book about a boy who always interrupts his friends and teacher because he wants to share what is in his head.  It gives those students who have trouble with blurting out a tool to help them work on controlling that behavior so they can be better listeners.

The book, Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed by Emily Pearson is a sweet story that would be wonderful for cause and effect as well as teaching about how kind deeds can have a reaching effect on many people.  Mary does one kind deed that causes another person to do something kind,  then that person decides to do something kind and it keeps on growing until the one deed is felt by many.  I think this book would also be great to use in a math lesson too! 

Last year I found the book, The Little White Owl, while I was searching Amazon and just had to buy it for the cute owls and the publishers description of the book.  What a find!!  Not only are the illustrations beautiful, the story is sweet and I was able to use it for a lesson about discrimination and then again as a writing lesson.  The owl lives all alone with no parents but is so happy and when he meets other owls that treat him differently because he is plain he is undaunted and shares his story telling skills with them and teaches them a powerful lesson about how being different is OK. Make sure to check this story out because it is a sweet book that I know your students will enjoy!

While I am sharing books that are good for exploring differences, I would be silly not to mention a teacher and student favorite; Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes.  This book is a great book to use at the beginning of the year to have students explore their names and is also great to introduce the topic of teasing and treating each other kindly.  Be sure to check out my Kevin Henkes author study unit in my TPT store for cute follow ups for this and many other Kevin Henkes stories.

This linky is so much fun!  I could go on and on with my favorite character education books but I will stop after this last cute book.  Enemy Pie is a funny story where the main character is upset because someone new moved to his neighborhood and he is convinced that the boy is his enemy.  His father takes a different approach and tricks his son into understanding why it is important to get to know people before judging them.  This book is available as a read aloud on the website Storylineonline, make sure to go and check it out before school starts!

Thanks for stopping by!  Make sure to go back to First Grade and Fabulous to see all the other cool blogs!  Amazon, here I come...