Character Education

I have found some great books to use for Character Education lessons, and I wanted to share them with you. The first book I wanted to share today is called The Little White Owl, by Tracey Corderoy and Jane Chapman. Here is a description from Amazon:

Once there was a little white owl who lived by himself in the snow. He didn’t have a mommy. He didn’t have a daddy. He didn’t even have a name. But he didn’t really mind too much. His head was full of happy stories…

After we read the story, I show the children two bags full of things- one fancy bag and one plain bag. I ask them to choose which bag they would like have. I will share what is that bag with the class.

Of course, inside the beautiful bag, I have a dried-up glue stick, some old gum wrappers, and a broken crayon. Inside the plain white bag, I have Hershey Kisses or Smarties or something like that. You can’t judge a book by its cover. Lesson learned!

This next book is a very familiar book. I actually think Have You Filled a Bucket Today works better for my kindergarteners than How Full is Your Bucket, although both are great.

These blue glass stones from The Dollar Store work perfectly for drops to fill a bucket. I keep them in a small bucket in the classroom as a reminder for the children to fill other people’s buckets.

I made these writing prompts to go along with the bucket filling stories. Click on the picture below if you would like a copy. You can tape a blue glass stone right in the bucket on the paper for the child to take home with him and keep beside his bed, to remember to do kind things to fill other people’s buckets. (Just be sure your students are old enough not to put these in their mouth, because they could choke.)

These Character Education lessons only take a few minutes, but you can revisit them any time you need to, because the children have a visual to go along with what they learn.

Dr. Jean and I have different character education activities, as well as activities and songs for all subject areas, in each of our monthly HAPPIES packets! You can find these at Dr. Jean’s website or at my TpT Store!