Books are an entertaining and effective way when wondering how to teach sharing. They keep children engaged while helping them understand its value through characters and stories. Books are a great way to make the concept more relatable and fun. Keep reading for more on how to teach sharing to children including the ‘why’ behind it, what to do along the way reading, and some book titles sure to keep children learning while having fun.
Why Should You Teach Your Child To Share?
Sharing is an important social skill for everyone to have.
Here are a few things learning to share can help children with:
- Understand others’ feelings – They learn to care about how others feel.
- Work together – It teaches teamwork and cooperation.
- Make friends – Sharing helps kids connect and build friendships.
- Solve problems – They practice taking turns and compromising.
- Be fair and respectful – It shows the value of treating others equally.
As a whole, learning to share helps kids grow into kind and considerate people.
How To Teach About Sharing With Books
Books can be a powerful way to teach any social skills topic. Here are a few overall points when doing this.
Start with the cover – before you start reading, examine the book cover. Ask questions like, “What do you think this story will be about?” or “Who are the characters?”
Utilize the pictures – pictures can contain great clues as to what is happening. They also have lots of fun details that kids will love pointing out. Pictures can also give ideas as to what will happen next. As you read, look closely at the illustrations. Ask, “What do you see in the pictures?” “How do the characters look?” “What might happen next based on what the picture shows?”
Make predictions as you go – For this, you can use both the text and what has already happened. When using the text, pay attention to the words and phrases. Ask, “What is happening right now?” Then after each page or section, pause and ask, “What do you think will happen next?” or “How do you think the character feels?” This helps build predictions as the story progresses.
Draw connections – making connections is a helpful way for students to connect what is happening in the book to what is happening in their own lives.
How to Learn to Share Book Ideas
There are many great books out there on the social skill of sharing. Here are a few favorites:
The Fort by Laura Perdew is a book about a tree house used by two children, but the children don’t know about eachother’s use. One child uses as a castle and another uses as a pirate ship. Then at one point, the children find out about each other’s use and work on how to learn to share the treehouse.
The Sharing Circle by Theresa “Corky” Larsen-Jonasson is an excellent book on how to teach kids about sharing when talking. It has whimsical animals as the main characters who learn the rules of being in a sharing circle. Different concepts of sharing while speaking in a group are gone over, including using a talking stick. This would be an amazing book to help a student who struggles with sharing the spotlight during class or small group conversations.
The Magic of Sharing by Ruben Lora and Ksenia Startseva-Lora would be a helpful book when looking at how to teach sharing between siblings. Its main character, Sofia, explores different forms of sharing. Her skills come into play when someone else wants to play with her absolute favorite toy. Along the way, the book discusses topics of empathy, cooperation, and the joy of playing together with others.
Mine! by Candace Fleming is a fun book on the topic. It uses silly animals and rhythmic tones throughout, making it easy to keep children’s attention. In this book, everyone is hungry but only 1 apple comes down from the tree. All the animals want the apple and keep repeating the phrase “mine” to call dibs. The ending brings about a surprise while also bringing the topic of how to encourage sharing in children to the forefront.
Need a Sharing Lesson?
If you aren’t sure how else to teach this important skill, check out this helpful and engaging teaching resource.
You’ll find a 2 page lesson plan in a semi-scripted fashion. That way you know what to say, but still have room to make the lesson perfect for the students you are working with. There’s a whole page of extension ideas, including even more read alouds on sharing.
Students will love the two sets of task cards filled with everyday scenarios. These are both picture-heavy cards and those with more text. Students will begin to relate the topic of sharing to their own lives as they relate what is going on in the situations with things that have popped up in their own lives.
Additionally, students will practice their new skills with a coloring activity.
Grab this time-saving resource here to get your student’s understanding of sharing even further along.
Looking For More On How To Teach A Child To Share?
If you are looking for more on this topic and other basic social skills, check out these posts:
This post on teaching how to share identifies different activities to do – including even more books!
Teaching Feelings – working on basics of identifying emotions? This post features 3 Engaging Teaching Feelings Games to get your students involved while learning.
Listening Skills – teaching students to be active listeners can be tricky so head over to this post on How to Teach Listening Skills to get your students on the right track.
Taking Turns – It can be so hard for students to take turns. Click here for 5 Turn Taking Activities to get students mastering this important SEL skill.
Grab some of the great books from above and use the provided tips to get your next social skills group on how to teach children sharing off to a great start!
Happy Teaching!
