Using picture books in your classroom can do wonders for your students’ literacy skills while also helping them build relationship skills. These picture books support your students’ social and emotional growth. Through the stories and themes in these books, you can help your students develop essential relationship skills that are crucial not just for school but for life in general. These skills will enable them to interact positively with friends, family, and peers, teaching them the importance of healthy relationships. When students feel safe, secure, and supported, they thrive. Picture books serve as great mentor texts for demonstrating how to connect with others and build relationship skills.

Teaching Relationship Skills Using Moving Mountains

In our Moving Mountain with Picture Books resource, many books are related to the different types of relationship skills featured in this post. 

I NEED ThESE!

Here are the specific books from our Moving Mountain with Picture Books resource to help you build relationship skills this year.

• Classroom Community/ Team Building-In Our Garden
• Friendship- Rescue & Jessica 
• Authentic Apologies- Sorry!
• Sportsmanship- The Big Cheese
• Conflict resolution- The Sandwich Swap
• Bullying- Each Kindness

What are relationship skills?

According to CASEL, relationship skills are the ability to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups effectively.

Many students struggle with navigating friendships and building relationship skills. Picture books model different relationship skills, like actively listening, communicating effectively, having productive conversations, and demonstrating gratitude for one another.

Picture Books Illustrate

Social Interactions

It’s important for students to see how others interact with one another. Picture books show this by providing visual clues and a sequence of events during a specific social interaction. Within each story, the author shows relationships between others by showing their emotions and communication. 

Book Feature: The Sandwich Swap shows how the main characters interact with one another to solve a problem.

Emotions While Navigating Social Situations/Friendships

Illustrators can help create books that make readers feel an emotion between people. Students can make inferences about the characters based on their feelings during their interactions. Many picture books explicitly name and describe different emotions, helping children expand their emotional vocabulary. This makes it easier for them to identify and articulate their own feelings.

Book Feature: One powerful book that shows this is  Rescue & Jessica: A Life-Changing Friendship. Jessica goes through a life-altering experience. Her emotions show how much her friendship with Rescue means to her. 

Non-verbal Cues

Picture books are an excellent tool for teaching students about non-verbal cues through vivid illustrations that show body language, such as facial expressions, posture, and gestures. These visual elements help students understand emotions and social situations by observing and interpreting characters’ non-verbal behaviors. Teachers and parents can enhance this learning by discussing the illustrations, comparing verbal and non-verbal cues, and engaging in role-playing activities that mimic the characters’ behaviors. This contextual and interactive approach not only reinforces students’ understanding of non-verbal communication but also fosters empathy and improves their overall communication skills.

Book Feature: In the book Each Kindness, a little girl (and the rest of her classmates) is unwelcoming to a new student. Her nonverbal cues, like her body language and facial expressions, make the new student feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. This book offers the opportunity for great conversations with students about how communication can be non-verbal and can be very powerful. 

Perspective and Point of View

Picture books are a powerful tool for helping students develop perspective and point of view. Through engaging narratives and vivid illustrations, students are exposed to diverse characters and situations, allowing them to see the world from different angles. When a story is written in the first person, it lets readers into the character’s inner thoughts and feelings about the people they are building relationships with. This intimate access helps students appreciate multiple perspectives and recognize that everyone has unique experiences and viewpoints. By exploring these different angles, students build empathy and critical thinking skills, understanding the complexity of human interactions and the importance of considering others’ perspectives in their own lives.

Book Feature: In The Invisible Boy, a young boy is constantly left out of birthday parties and games until a new student arrives and makes a concerted effort to include him, showing empathy and kindness.

Problem-Solving

Part of having relationship skills is being able to agree and disagree with one another and actively solve problems. Problem-solving includes giving authentic and genuine apologies. 

Book Feature: In Sorry!, students witness a conflict between two characters and learn how a genuine apology can help mend and strengthen their relationship after it has been strained.

Positive Relationships

Many picture books show positive relationships with one another, such as teamwork, teambuilding, and making others feel welcome. In high-quality picture books, you will find examples of friends supporting each other, resolving conflicts amicably, and celebrating each other’s successes. By observing these interactions, children learn the qualities of healthy relationships and the importance of treating others with respect and understanding. Additionally, picture books often show diverse relationships, helping children appreciate and value differences while reinforcing the idea that positive relationships are based on mutual respect and care

Book Feature: in the book In Our Garden, a child moves to a new city and misses the garden she once had. She has a great idea to start a garden on her school’s rooftop. Her classmates come together to support her, and they work together to build a community garden. 

Download A FREE Book Companion

You can try one of our book companions for FREE to use with Thankful by Elaine Vickers! The plans include the perfect picture book companion activities to help students learn the importance of gratitude.

Free Book Suggestion Guide

Looking for more book tips? You can use these book lists as a resource for yourself or share them with your students’ families. I always print them out and have them ready to go for important nights like parent-teacher conferences, back to school night, and open house.