Picture Books That Build S/E Skills

Once or twice a month, we will be sharing some books you can use in the classroom to build social emotional skills. This month I chose three books which are good for the start of school. Please share your favorite beginning of the year books in the comment section.

I’ve been looking for a good new book to use at the beginning of school. Just today, I discovered Jack’s Talent by Maryann Cocca-Leffler (2007). I found the book on the shelf at Besore Library in Greencastle, but it can be borrowed through the library system. This picture book is about the first day of school. The teacher asks each child to share a special talent. The text is simple, making this an easy read for early in the year. It is a great book for encouraging the children to talk about their special talents. Children will feel good about themselves and get to know their classmates in the process. Teachers should be prepared with a few ideas for those children who cannot think of a special talent. One idea for expanding this book, would be to send home a small poster for each child to decorate with his or her parents. Make sure parents understand that they will need to indicate a special talent for their child. The children bring these back to school and share them with classmates. If you use name tags, you might want to represent the child’s special talent on those. As a follow up, the teacher may want to graph the special talents. Your main focus is to help children feel good about themselves and their classmates.


Another book that is nice for the beginning of the year is Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes (1996). I’ve been using this one for years and the only problem is that it is a bit wordy for some younger children. You can paraphrase and children will still be able to comprehend the story line. Chrysanthemum loves her name until others make fun of it. Eventually Chrysanthemum feels better about her name and is happy once more. One I do every year is graph how many letters is in each child’s name. While I usually focus on the literacy aspect, it is a good time to have children be proud of their names. If you send a note home beforehand, parents can talk with children about why they were given their name. Children may want to share this with the class.
Just discussing names will help the children learn to know each other. You could extend this by helping the children make special personalized name tags for use in the classroom or play name bingo depending on the children’s skills.

You might want to focus on the behaviors and feelings in the story. Children can draw about a time when they felt sad or how Chrysanthemum felt at the middle and end of the story. Talk about how feelings can change. Another focus might be how we should treat classmates. There is so many learning possibilities with this story, I’m sure you will think of even more than I have.

A third book, I've used to ease those first day jitters is The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn(1993). You can use it to discuss the many ways children may feel about the first day of school- excited, happy, sad, nervous and so on. You may want to graph the way children are feeling.