Picture Book Linky Party

Oh how I love books!  I use them to kick of everything I teach.  I have many back to school favorites!  First Grade and Fabulous is hosting a linky all about books we use at the beginning of the year.

We read a lot of character ed. books this year and I found a new favorite author!  Her name is Julia Cook.  She writes the funniest books that address real classroom issues that we all deal with.  My kids responded really well to her books and started using some of the lingo to politely tell other kids what was an issue. Here are a few we really loved!

“My Mouth is a Volcano” and “Personal Space Camp” were particularly helpful this year. I also really liked:

Here are my favorite books for the beginning of the year!

I like using the Black Lagoon series to break the ice and talk about the jitters we all have.  Plus, the teacher and I have the same name, so I went through the book and colored her hair brown!  (Shh! Don’t tell!) First Day Jitters is a favorite from first grade!

Miss Nelson is the perfect book for brainstorming rules.  I stop at the point when the kids are wild and have the kids brainstorm rules to help in the class in small groups.  Then we come back and finish the book.  We make a giant list of all the rules and I color code them as we brainstorm. The color code follows my classroom rules: Be Respectful, Be Responsible, Be Kind and Be Safe – all of the kids rules fit somewhere in these four! I plan to make my banners inspired by The Inspired Apple with my class this year.

These books are great for talking about listening rules.

Great books for beginning a discussion about what we like to read and introducing the classroom library.

Great books for introducing book nooks and reading workshop/Daily 5

I love reading the Library Dragon to talk about how to treat books and behave during reading workshop.

Love this book for talking about being ourselves!

I discovered these books last year when I read about them on a few blogs.  I like using them to talk about bullying and how we are going to treat each other in class.

And, of course, the Bucket books are great for beginning the year. I am going to add The Seven Habits of Happy Kids this year.

Well, those are just a “few” of my favroites1\. I can’t wait to find more!