Hey Little Ant is a great teaching tool to explain empathy to young children. I chose this book this week because the children were looking at ants on the playground and the issue of how to treat them came up. This book turns around the issue of a boy who is about to squish an ant. The ant cleverly demonstrates what it would be like if the ant was a giant and the boy was the size of an insect. Both classes understood the lesson and when we were outside in the playground you could hear the conversations that contained respectful language. For example, "Remember don't touch the ants, just look with your eyes."
Something From Nothing is a classic Canadian children's book. It has a wonderful lyrical quality to it that has the children reading along with the repetitive text. In the story a young boy has a special blanket that his grandfather made him. As he grows older, the blanket grows older too and he does not want to part with it. His grandfather makes new things out of the material until only a piece the size of a button is left. The students and I had a great discussion about memories ("Can you hold a memory in your hand?") This is a real thinking story and we took two days to fully talk about this book.
Seeds is a great non-fiction book to introduce children to the different kinds of seeds and the ways that plants have adapted to make sure that its seeds are distributed far and wide. I used this as an introduction to our plant unit. The children learned how to sprout seeds and we even examined, and ate, corn seeds (as popcorn), sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. The favourite part of this book for both classes was learning that when birds eat berries, for example, blackberries, the seeds are not digested and the seeds are distributed to different places through the bird's poop!
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