Wish List

It all started with an email from Amazon indicating that my free year long trial of Amazon Prime shipping is about to come to an end. ::tear:: I have until July 21st to get free next day shipping and after that, I will have to pay the fee to keep the prime shipping account in action. Because I am a student, I was able to have Prime shipping free for a year and now I can pay $39 if I want to keep the account. I guess the regular price is $79, so I am leading towards taking advantage of that deal. With all that I order from amazon, I think I will definitely get my money's worth in what I save on shipping costs.

But, since I am not sure if I will keep my Prime account, I thought I better order some of the books I want for the upcoming school year before my free shipping runs out. Mrs. Bee said I can ship anything I order to her house since I am still in Germany. I was emailing Mrs. Bee, who is my sweet friend and also teaches Kinder at my school, this morning and I got to thinking about all the amazing books I have read about on Books that Heal Kids. If you don't know about this blog, go there...now! (Actually, finish reading my post and then go there!). Roxanne has the greatest inventory of fabulous books that help teach kids valuable lessons and things about life. She summarizes the stories and gives a little blurb about why she loves the books.  In order to come up with the list of what I want to order, I just popped on over to her blog and used her list of topics to search for books that will help me with particular lessons.

I did not do a good job teaching our social skills program last year (because I don't like it) so I want to make this year better--by using stories to teach about these skills and concepts rather than scripted lessons based on photo cards. These stories will help kids to relate better and let's face it, I just love any opportunity to buy more books. I was just in the basement yesterday returning some books to their boxes so they are altogether for our big move in August and I was so happy to see all my books that I will finally have in my classroom again once our shipment arrives (in October?).

So, I searched and found many books that I would love to get and I started by just putting them in my amazon cart. I am not pulling the trigger on buying them quite yet because the cost is close to $200, but at least that gives me a place where I can refer to the titles I want and possibly find more reasonable prices on used books or something like that.

Without further ado, I present to you....my wish list! 

This first set shows books on skin color, culture, and diversity.

This next set is more focused on social skills, school rules, and behavior.

I think I am most excited for Rosemary Wells' new series of Kindergator books! She is devoting a whole series to social skills books and that is awesome!

I love the power of a good story and I hope that I can get my hands on at least some of these gems to use this year. Yes, the library is always an option, but I do much better when I actually own the books, and if they are truly great, then I want to have them for my own collection. We found that we definitely had to break out The Bucket Book on numerous occasions last year so I was glad to be able to just grab my copy and remind the kiddos about filling buckets rather than waiting days to get it from the library in order to remind the kiddos of said bucket filling.

What are some of your favorite books for teaching kids about social skills, behavior, or diversity?