Rebel Back-to-School Reads

If you know me at all, you know I'm a bit of a rebel. Nothing big like ducking jury duty or parking in reserved spaces or anything. But in the classroom, I am prone to question things. I know there are a ton of great back-to-school titles out there. Chrysanthemum, the Kissing Hand, First Day Jitters-and I have used these books with my kiddos. Particularly because I'm looping, but also because I think they are commonly used and don't like to repeat books/activities others have done, I am going to have a different theme this 1st week. I want the kids to think about themselves-what makes them unique and also stress classroom community and teamwork. I'm going to use:

Both Elmer and Ferdinand are about characters that are themselves-no matter what. I think that will be a great thing to encourage discussion that first week.

Working together saves the day-definitely want a model for the tons of cooperative group activities we are going to attempt this year.

The stuffed animals work together to find a missing blanket. Just look at the illustrations-doesn't it make you want to just cuddle with them!

Classic story about 2 characters who think they have nothing in common and bicker--then of course, everything changes when they begin to spend some time together. 

I just ADORE this book! I just discovered it when I was teaching summer school and going through the stories on Story Online to see if there were any good ones on there that went along with the lesson I was planning. (This is it if you want to listen to it: http://www.storylineonline.net/wilfrid/fullscreen_yt.html). This story is about memories and how important they are. We adopt a nursing home every year and will again this upcoming year, so I really want to do some activities with this story where the kids are recording their best memories!