Children's Literature Connections
Social Studies Unit: Families
Target Grade: Kindergarten
Banks, K. and Bogacki, T. Mama's coming home. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003. Print.
This story is about a family who is waiting for the mom to get home from work. While she is on her way home, it talks about how the dad puts on his apron and starts to prepare supper. It also talks about what the kids are doing while they are waiting and their father is cooking. This book is simply for the purpose of showing the different roles one family might have. I chose this particular book because it allows students to see an ever-growing norm, but gender-role challenging situation where the mother is the one who is working outside of the home and the father is taking care of the cooking. Lesson use: This book will serve as a read aloud for the lesson on family roles, responsibilities, and needs. We will answer questions such as, what roles did each member of the family have? Are there any similarities between this family and yours in terms of roles? Why do you think each family member had the role that they had? Did any of the roles that the family members have surprise you? Why? Who possibly determined these roles? Are the roles/responsibilities fair? Some of these questions will address gender roles/stereotypes, as well as equity and justice within the structure of family roles.
Curtis, J. and Cornell, L. It's hard to be five: learning how to work my control panel. New York: Joanna Cotler Books, 2004. Print.
This book is about being five and what types of things are expected from children at this age. This includes what is expected of them at home and at school. They are expected to sit, sit, and sit some more, as well as clean up their messes, etc. It also explains how it can be hard to take on these new expectations. This read aloud and following discussion will be a springboard for the main part of the lesson on family roles. Lesson use: This book will be a read aloud at the beginning of the lesson on family roles, responsibilities, and needs. After the read aloud, we will have a discussion on the things five year-olds are expected to do, bringing up points from the story, as well as bringing up roles/responsibilities that the children have as students and within their families. This book is a great connector for students to start thinking about roles and to help them later in identifying a difference between their roles/responsibilities and other members of their familiy.
Filigenzi, C. and Bersani, S. Let my colors out. Atlanta, Ga.: American Cancer Society, 2009. Print.
In this book, a young child is dealing with his mom’s diagnosis and treatment of cancer. He experiences a rang of emotions—scared, sad, jealous, feeling fine, denial, anger—that together form a rainbow of hope through this critical time. The book offers a way to open up communication between parents and their children, giving children understanding, but also assurance that they can share their feelings. Lesson use: This lesson will be used in the final lesson, family hardships and associated feelings. It will help students to identify particular family hardships and the feelings associated with that hardship, as well as ways in which to deal with that hardship.
Fox, M. and Vivas, J. Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Kane/Miller, 19851984. Print.
This story is about a boy who visits the elderly that live next door to him. While he is there, he has a very special, close friend who is an old woman. The woman is losing her memory, but by the end of the story she remembers all of the secrets they had shared. This book does a great job at showing a close relationship with another person who isn’t necessarily blood related. Lesson use: This book will serve as a read aloud for the lesson on the hierarchy of family. It will help to show students the idea of kinship and help them to think of a person in their life that they have a connection/relationship with that they consider family, but is not blood related.
Fox-Lee, K., Fox-Lee, S., and Jennings, R. What are parents?. Antelope, CA: StoryTyme Pub., 2004. Print.
This book offers students a look into diverse families. It teaches children that there are all types of families and that a parent is someone who loves, teaches, and is devoted to their child. The various diverse families shown in this book include families that go through adoption, a single mom, grandparents as parents, and families with two moms or two dads, while also focusing around different cultures and religions. Lesson use: This book could be used as a read aloud with students on the topics of family make-up. It is, in general, an all-around great book for this unit since it focuses on so many aspects of families. If used as a read-aloud, I would talk to students about the various family make-ups that they saw in the story and have them try to think of examples of families in their lives, as well as their own, that may resemble any families in the book. It offers a great eye-opening experience to students who may not have much experience with diverse family types and the book deals with the subject in a way that shows that diverse family structures are something to take pride in.
Hausherr, R. Celebrating families. New York: Scholastic Press, 1997. Print.
In this book, the author has featured fourteen different children from various family arrangements. These children come from all different kinds of backgrounds and throughout the book they introduce the reader to their families. Some of the various families that are featured include: single-parent, two-parent, multigenerational, and interracial families. There are also children who live with foster families, children who live in shelters and communes, a child whose mother is in a wheelchair, and one who visits her father in prison. Lesson use: This book could be used throughout the lesson as a whole, but would fit very well within the lesson about family make-up. It focuses around the many different kinds of families that can be found throughout the world. In this, we could approach subjects of equity and justice in reference to different family groupings within the society in which we live.
Kroll, V. and Schuett, S. Beginnings: how families come to be. Morton Grove, Ill.: A Whitman, 1994. Print.
This is yet another book that focuses on different family arrangements and how families come to be. It focuses on ways families grow from birth to adoption (open and closed, domestic and foreign) to guardianship to single parenthood and so on. There are families chosen from a variety of backgrounds including urban and suburban, healthy or disabled families, and white, Asian-American, Hispanic, and African-American families. This book helps to show the diversity of families and will help children to see that the diversity among the families represented in our classroom is something to take pride in. Lesson use: This lesson would work for the entire unit on families. It is especially helpful in showing the diversity of families to students.
Ransom, J. and Finney, K. I don't want to talk about it. Washington, D.C.: Magination Press, 2000. Print.
This story is about a girl whose parents have decided to divorce and she does not want to talk about it. She talks about how she wants to roar as loud as a lion so she can’t hear their painful words, or turn into a fish and hid her tears in the sea, or even become a bird and fly away. With the help of her parents, she starts to consider what life will be like after divorce and learns that some things will change, while others will remain the same. Lesson use: This lesson is intended to be used in the final lesson of the family unit about family hardships and associated feelings. It will be used a read aloud for students so they can discuss the hardship at hand and the ways in which the family feels/deals with the given situation.
Simon, Norma, and Jacqueline Rogers. The saddest time. Niles, Ill.: A. Whitman, 1986. Print.
This book is a great resource to use with students and focuses on children who are dealing with both the potential and eventual loss of someone they care about. There are three short stories that are outlined in the book. The first story is about anticipatory grief that a child may experience when someone is terminally ill and the possibility of losing parents. It also included the grief after death, and attempts to help and comfort the family. The second story is about an accidental death of a classmate so we will skip this story for the purposes of this unit. The third story is about a child’s grandmother who is dying and actually dies when family is present. Lesson use: This book is to be used in the last lesson of the unit, family hardships and associated feelings. It gives students an example of a family hardship and the feelings associated with that hardship. It also offers insight into how a family deals with that hardship in a positive way.
Skutch, R. and Zarrinnaal, L. Who's in a family?. Berkeley, Calif.: Tricycle Press, 1995. Print.
This book outlines different multicultural contemporary family units, which include families with single parents, lesbian and gay parents, mixed-race couples, grandparents, and divorced parents. They also make connections to various animal families. Overall, this book provides students with a picture of many different family configurations and stresses each one to incorporate the same principle, which is love makes a family. Lesson use: Although this book can be used for many of the lessons within this unit, I would choose to include it in the lesson on the hierarchy of families. This would be the first lesson in the unit and the book gives a great starting point for talking about the different types of families we see, the size of families within the book, and allows students to pick out families that might represent what their families look like. It also gets them thinking about what their immediate family looks like. By talking about the resemblance between students’ families and the families in the book, I will be provided with information on the make-up of families in my classroom if I do not already know this information.
Sweeney, J. and Cable, A. Me and my family tree. New York: Crown Publishers, 1999. Print.
This story is about a girl who thinks of the various members of her family, including her immediate and extended family, and creates her own diagrams to show the relationships between those members. This gives a picture representation of what a family tree would look like, which will helps students to understand the project that is to follow the read aloud. Lesson use: This book will be used as a read aloud in the lesson on the hierarchy of families. This book will be helpful in showing students how their family tree might look and what it might incorporate. It will also help the students in identifying key members of their immediate and extended families.
Yoon, S. Chores, chores, chores!. New York, N.Y.: Price Stern Sloan, 2008. Print.
This story is about a young girl who has a large list of chores. Throughout the book she trudges along completing her chores and finds out it was worth it in the end. This book will help to show students roles a child might have at home. This will help them to think of the roles they are asked of in the home. Lesson use: This will be a read aloud used on the last day of the lesson about family roles, responsibilities, and needs. It will help students to add even more roles to our lists of student/child roles so they can see the variety of roles and be able to have a wide variety of roles to compare to their unique roles in the home. I will ask students a series of questions getting to some important concepts of equity and justice within the home distribution of responsibilities. These questions will include: why do you think she was given all of those jobs? Why might have no one helped her with them? Do you think it was fair that she had to complete all of those jobs/roles?
Target Grade: Kindergarten
Banks, K. and Bogacki, T. Mama's coming home. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003. Print.
This story is about a family who is waiting for the mom to get home from work. While she is on her way home, it talks about how the dad puts on his apron and starts to prepare supper. It also talks about what the kids are doing while they are waiting and their father is cooking. This book is simply for the purpose of showing the different roles one family might have. I chose this particular book because it allows students to see an ever-growing norm, but gender-role challenging situation where the mother is the one who is working outside of the home and the father is taking care of the cooking. Lesson use: This book will serve as a read aloud for the lesson on family roles, responsibilities, and needs. We will answer questions such as, what roles did each member of the family have? Are there any similarities between this family and yours in terms of roles? Why do you think each family member had the role that they had? Did any of the roles that the family members have surprise you? Why? Who possibly determined these roles? Are the roles/responsibilities fair? Some of these questions will address gender roles/stereotypes, as well as equity and justice within the structure of family roles.
Curtis, J. and Cornell, L. It's hard to be five: learning how to work my control panel. New York: Joanna Cotler Books, 2004. Print.
This book is about being five and what types of things are expected from children at this age. This includes what is expected of them at home and at school. They are expected to sit, sit, and sit some more, as well as clean up their messes, etc. It also explains how it can be hard to take on these new expectations. This read aloud and following discussion will be a springboard for the main part of the lesson on family roles. Lesson use: This book will be a read aloud at the beginning of the lesson on family roles, responsibilities, and needs. After the read aloud, we will have a discussion on the things five year-olds are expected to do, bringing up points from the story, as well as bringing up roles/responsibilities that the children have as students and within their families. This book is a great connector for students to start thinking about roles and to help them later in identifying a difference between their roles/responsibilities and other members of their familiy.
Filigenzi, C. and Bersani, S. Let my colors out. Atlanta, Ga.: American Cancer Society, 2009. Print.
In this book, a young child is dealing with his mom’s diagnosis and treatment of cancer. He experiences a rang of emotions—scared, sad, jealous, feeling fine, denial, anger—that together form a rainbow of hope through this critical time. The book offers a way to open up communication between parents and their children, giving children understanding, but also assurance that they can share their feelings. Lesson use: This lesson will be used in the final lesson, family hardships and associated feelings. It will help students to identify particular family hardships and the feelings associated with that hardship, as well as ways in which to deal with that hardship.
Fox, M. and Vivas, J. Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Kane/Miller, 19851984. Print.
This story is about a boy who visits the elderly that live next door to him. While he is there, he has a very special, close friend who is an old woman. The woman is losing her memory, but by the end of the story she remembers all of the secrets they had shared. This book does a great job at showing a close relationship with another person who isn’t necessarily blood related. Lesson use: This book will serve as a read aloud for the lesson on the hierarchy of family. It will help to show students the idea of kinship and help them to think of a person in their life that they have a connection/relationship with that they consider family, but is not blood related.
Fox-Lee, K., Fox-Lee, S., and Jennings, R. What are parents?. Antelope, CA: StoryTyme Pub., 2004. Print.
This book offers students a look into diverse families. It teaches children that there are all types of families and that a parent is someone who loves, teaches, and is devoted to their child. The various diverse families shown in this book include families that go through adoption, a single mom, grandparents as parents, and families with two moms or two dads, while also focusing around different cultures and religions. Lesson use: This book could be used as a read aloud with students on the topics of family make-up. It is, in general, an all-around great book for this unit since it focuses on so many aspects of families. If used as a read-aloud, I would talk to students about the various family make-ups that they saw in the story and have them try to think of examples of families in their lives, as well as their own, that may resemble any families in the book. It offers a great eye-opening experience to students who may not have much experience with diverse family types and the book deals with the subject in a way that shows that diverse family structures are something to take pride in.
Hausherr, R. Celebrating families. New York: Scholastic Press, 1997. Print.
In this book, the author has featured fourteen different children from various family arrangements. These children come from all different kinds of backgrounds and throughout the book they introduce the reader to their families. Some of the various families that are featured include: single-parent, two-parent, multigenerational, and interracial families. There are also children who live with foster families, children who live in shelters and communes, a child whose mother is in a wheelchair, and one who visits her father in prison. Lesson use: This book could be used throughout the lesson as a whole, but would fit very well within the lesson about family make-up. It focuses around the many different kinds of families that can be found throughout the world. In this, we could approach subjects of equity and justice in reference to different family groupings within the society in which we live.
Kroll, V. and Schuett, S. Beginnings: how families come to be. Morton Grove, Ill.: A Whitman, 1994. Print.
This is yet another book that focuses on different family arrangements and how families come to be. It focuses on ways families grow from birth to adoption (open and closed, domestic and foreign) to guardianship to single parenthood and so on. There are families chosen from a variety of backgrounds including urban and suburban, healthy or disabled families, and white, Asian-American, Hispanic, and African-American families. This book helps to show the diversity of families and will help children to see that the diversity among the families represented in our classroom is something to take pride in. Lesson use: This lesson would work for the entire unit on families. It is especially helpful in showing the diversity of families to students.
Ransom, J. and Finney, K. I don't want to talk about it. Washington, D.C.: Magination Press, 2000. Print.
This story is about a girl whose parents have decided to divorce and she does not want to talk about it. She talks about how she wants to roar as loud as a lion so she can’t hear their painful words, or turn into a fish and hid her tears in the sea, or even become a bird and fly away. With the help of her parents, she starts to consider what life will be like after divorce and learns that some things will change, while others will remain the same. Lesson use: This lesson is intended to be used in the final lesson of the family unit about family hardships and associated feelings. It will be used a read aloud for students so they can discuss the hardship at hand and the ways in which the family feels/deals with the given situation.
Simon, Norma, and Jacqueline Rogers. The saddest time. Niles, Ill.: A. Whitman, 1986. Print.
This book is a great resource to use with students and focuses on children who are dealing with both the potential and eventual loss of someone they care about. There are three short stories that are outlined in the book. The first story is about anticipatory grief that a child may experience when someone is terminally ill and the possibility of losing parents. It also included the grief after death, and attempts to help and comfort the family. The second story is about an accidental death of a classmate so we will skip this story for the purposes of this unit. The third story is about a child’s grandmother who is dying and actually dies when family is present. Lesson use: This book is to be used in the last lesson of the unit, family hardships and associated feelings. It gives students an example of a family hardship and the feelings associated with that hardship. It also offers insight into how a family deals with that hardship in a positive way.
Skutch, R. and Zarrinnaal, L. Who's in a family?. Berkeley, Calif.: Tricycle Press, 1995. Print.
This book outlines different multicultural contemporary family units, which include families with single parents, lesbian and gay parents, mixed-race couples, grandparents, and divorced parents. They also make connections to various animal families. Overall, this book provides students with a picture of many different family configurations and stresses each one to incorporate the same principle, which is love makes a family. Lesson use: Although this book can be used for many of the lessons within this unit, I would choose to include it in the lesson on the hierarchy of families. This would be the first lesson in the unit and the book gives a great starting point for talking about the different types of families we see, the size of families within the book, and allows students to pick out families that might represent what their families look like. It also gets them thinking about what their immediate family looks like. By talking about the resemblance between students’ families and the families in the book, I will be provided with information on the make-up of families in my classroom if I do not already know this information.
Sweeney, J. and Cable, A. Me and my family tree. New York: Crown Publishers, 1999. Print.
This story is about a girl who thinks of the various members of her family, including her immediate and extended family, and creates her own diagrams to show the relationships between those members. This gives a picture representation of what a family tree would look like, which will helps students to understand the project that is to follow the read aloud. Lesson use: This book will be used as a read aloud in the lesson on the hierarchy of families. This book will be helpful in showing students how their family tree might look and what it might incorporate. It will also help the students in identifying key members of their immediate and extended families.
Yoon, S. Chores, chores, chores!. New York, N.Y.: Price Stern Sloan, 2008. Print.
This story is about a young girl who has a large list of chores. Throughout the book she trudges along completing her chores and finds out it was worth it in the end. This book will help to show students roles a child might have at home. This will help them to think of the roles they are asked of in the home. Lesson use: This will be a read aloud used on the last day of the lesson about family roles, responsibilities, and needs. It will help students to add even more roles to our lists of student/child roles so they can see the variety of roles and be able to have a wide variety of roles to compare to their unique roles in the home. I will ask students a series of questions getting to some important concepts of equity and justice within the home distribution of responsibilities. These questions will include: why do you think she was given all of those jobs? Why might have no one helped her with them? Do you think it was fair that she had to complete all of those jobs/roles?