13 Community Books for Kids

November 27, 2019

I’m a child of the 80s. I grew up watching Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and Sesame Street everyday. When my girls were little, we became fans of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood in addition to my own two childhood favorites.

We lived in an apartment during our first few years as a family as four, and I’ll be honest with you. It’s hard to get a “neighborhood” feeling when you hardly know your neighbors. We would occasionally see other families in the grassy “dog park,” but most of them were living in the temporary, furnished apartments for just a few weeks while they waited for their permanent home to be ready.

When we moved to our new community a few years ago, we quickly saw all that we had been missing during our apartment years. We have wonderful neighbors who we know by name. The librarians know US by name. Our grocery store manager happens to live a few houses over, and our optometrist goes to our church. The people in our community are part of our daily lives — and if feels good to belong!

If you are doing tot school or preschool at home with your kiddos, COMMUNITY is a fantastic unit study.

There are so many different “sub-themes” to study:

community helpers
fire safety
stranger danger, etc.

And while you can do this unit study at any time of the year, I like to do it right before Thanksgiving, since it ties in so beautifully to being grateful and giving back to the people around you!

Check out our My Community Family Activity Guide in The Play School Club!

There are so many terrific children’s books about community as well. These are just a few favorites from our collection and some new titles we discovered at the library.

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