Hello friends! Today I'm starting a five week series devoted to teaching kindness in your classroom. We are living in a very stressful time. Turning on the news is incredibly scary and as a mother and educator, I just want to shelter my babies from all the chaos. A lot has to change in our society for things to get better and we can debate on what that is...but today I would like to focus on small things we can do daily to start making a difference for our children.
Just like children need to learn math facts and the alphabet, children need to be taught how to be kind. It is not something that just happens. Children's brains are wired to mimic what they see more than what they are told. If children are told to be nice and share but watch others fighting and watch violent shows on television or on their iPad, they are going to be more likely to mimic the violent behavior than adhere to the command of "Be nice." It's just the way the brain works. We can thank our friends "mirror neurons" for this!
Teaching is a tough job, and there are way more things that need to get done in a day that are humanly possible. I totally get that. However, I think that living in the time we are living in really challenges us to reflect on what is the most important. Research shows that children with strong social emotional skills will be more successful later in life than children who score high on academic tests but have poor social emotional skills. So what does that tell us? It tells us that if we want our children to be successful in life, we need to put social emotional skills at the forefront of what we are teaching every single day.
Once a week for the next five weeks, I will be posting tips and strategies to help you teach kindness in your classroom. Don't worry, it's not one more thing for you to do. Teaching kindness can be easily incorporated into any other content area you are teaching. Today I want to help you by sharing five read alouds you can use to teach kindness in your classroom.
The power of reading aloud is exponential. There are so many skills children sharpen when they sit and listen to a great book. The nice thing about reading books about kindness is that you are teaching several skills beyond just kindness, so you're getting a lot of bang for your buck. The books I have listed below work for pre-k through third grade, you can also use them with the older kids but my area of expertise is early childhood specifically.
Comprehension skills are taught year round, so it's easy to incorporate these books into your weekly lesson plans. For example, if you're teaching text to self connections you could easily ask children to think of a connection between themselves and something that occurs in the text. The read alouds below will easily fit into any reading comprehension standard you need to address.
Here are some of my favorite read alouds for teaching kindness:
(Disclosure: Amazon affiliate links below, this means that at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.)
1: The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig
This book is a classic. A little bunny named Minna works on a kindness project with her classroom. As they complete acts of kindness they record them using a kindness quilt. It's great inspiration for your children to complete acts of kindness on their own.
3. Have You Filled a Bucket Today? By: Carol McCloud
I'm sure some of you have heard of "filling buckets" as many schools have used this as a way to encourage positive behavior on their campuses. The idea is that children are taught everyone has a bucket and our buckets get full when people are kind to us and we engage in positive behaviors. I definitely like that idea but be careful when using the term "bucket dipping". I have heard that used as a way to describe negative behavior and sometimes that term can be used to make kids feel bad. Instead of focusing on "bucket dippers" I would suggest focusing on "bucket fillers," still a really good book for teaching positive and kind behavior.
4. Those Shoes By: Maribeth Boelts
I really love this book! It's about a little boy who REALLY wants a pair of shoes that are very popular at his school. (I'm sure most kids can relate to that!) His grandma explains that they cannot afford those shoes, they can only afford things they need, not things they want. The little boy finds a pair of those shoes at a thrift store, but they're too small. In the end, you will see how the little boy finds out that objects are not more important than people...you have to read and find out what happens! *This book also teaches basic needs and other simple math skills.*
5. Do Unto Otters: A Book About Manners By: Laurie Keller
I recommend this book for 1st grade and up, it can be kind of overwhelming for the itty bitty kids. This book is very humorous and teaches children to treat others the way you want to be treated. There are a lot of cute, funny illustrations that will get kids talking about ways to be kind.
I hope these read alouds give you a good start for incorporating more instructional time to teaching kindness. If you use these books, I would love to hear how your kids liked them. Tag me on Instagram or Facebook, I'd love to hear from you!
Oh...and don't forget to come back next week for part two!
