Reading is one of the biggest gifts you can give to your child. Your kid, at an early age, has the ability to grasp things better and inherent characteristics forever. You can encourage values and morals in your kid by reading stories to him or her. As a bonus, your child will learn great vocabulary and writing skills. This article will help you choose the best short stories with great morals for your kid. Here are 24 short moral stories for kids
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1. The Empty Pot – Demi
An emperor in China decides to choose his successor by organizing a contest.
He asks contestants to grow a flower and the most appealing flower will win the contest.
Ping works hard with persistence, however, he fails to grow a flower. But he honestly presents his empty pot in front of the emperor and gets the reward for his honest approach.
Moral Story: Honesty is the best policy in life, even if you have to disappoint some people.
2. David Gets In Trouble – David Shannon
This story revolves around David who is unable to accept his wrong actions.
He makes excuses all the time. However, the circumstances make him realize the value of truth in life.
Moral Stories For Kids: We all need to stand up for our actions, no matter if it gets us into trouble.
3. The Honest-To-Goodness Truth – Patricia C. McKissack
Libby lies and people catch her lie, so she promises everyone in the town to follow honesty. However, she soon starts upsetting people with her harsh honesty. She doesn’t know what to do. Her mother helps to understand the right way of telling the truth.
Moral Stories For Kids: We don’t have to be harsh, to be honest. There is a right as well as a wrong way of telling a truth.
4. Strega Nona – Tomie DePaola
This story revolves around a benevolent witch named Strega Nona. She is loved by everyone in town. She hires a man named Big Anthony to help her out as an assistant. Big Anthony is not supposed to touch the magical pot of pasta. But he doesn’t listen and touches the pot. As a result, the whole town gets a ton of pasta everywhere.
Moral Stories For Kids: Your promise should mean something, otherwise people won’t trust you.
5. What If Everybody Did That? – Ellen Javernick
Imagine everyone breaking all the rules. This is what this story tells children to imagine. Breaking rules all the time can turn into serious situations. The story presents multiple situations to help children understand how every action has an impact on the world.
Moral Stories For Kids: Even our tiniest actions have the ability to make a big impact in the world we live in. So, we need to be responsible about it.
Know More: Top 12 Motivational Stories For Kids
6. The Lorax – Dr Seuss
This fantasy tale revolves around Once-ler, who comes across a whole valley of Brown Bar-ba-loots and Truffula Trees. He keeps on harvesting it all and soon everything vanishes.
Moral Stories For Kids: We should care about everything we have around us. Things that you see today, might not be there tomorrow.
7. Gratitude Soup – Olivia Rosewood
The Purple Fairy named Violet mixes her favorite experiences, people and things she feels grateful about. This turns into a huge pot full of Gratitude Soup. She magically puts the Gratitude Soup in her heart to remember all those things every day.
Moral Stories For Kids: If you think and remember what you feel grateful about, it improves your happiness.
8. An Awesome Book of Thanks – Dallas Clayton
Robotic dinosaurs and magical unicorns, this story teaches how to admire things in life. The pictures look beautiful and the language is simple to understand.
Moral Stories For Kids: If we look closely, our lives are full of reasons to feel thankful every day.
9. Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? – Dr Seuss
A young child who lives a difficult life finds an old man in a vast desert. The wise man helps him understand why he is so lucky in many ways.
Moral Stories For Kids: Life can be full of bad things, but you need to focus on good things and feel lucky.
10. A Sick Day for Amos McGee – Philip C. Stead
Amos McGee is a zookeeper who is responsible and takes complete care of the zoo animals. So, when Amos feels sick one day, all the animals take care of his health to return his kind favor.
Moral Stories For Kids: Kindness helps you feel happy and people come to your rescue to return your favor when you need them.
11. Have You Filled a Bucket Today? – Carol McCloud
The story tells about a bucket that we all keep with us invisibly. This bucket fills every time we spread kindness or others behave kindly to us. If people act mean to you or you act mean to others, this bucket gets emptied.
Moral Stories For Kids: Kindness is the key to happiness. If your surrounding is unkind, they feel unhappy, but you also become unable to feel happy because of that.
12. Horton Hears a Who! – Dr Seuss
Horton is an elephant who finds a town of tiny people living together on a dust speck. He does everything to protect them without caring about how small they are.
Moral Stories For Kids: You should care about and help everyone who requires your help without caring about if they match your level of strength.
13. Hey, Little Ant – Phillip and Hannah Hoose
Imagine a small ant speaking to you. A boy is about to step on a tiny ant and it suddenly starts speaking to him.
Moral Stories For Kids: You should have the empathy to understand how others feel.
Know More: General Knowledge For Kids (105 Questions and Answers)
14. The Invisible Boy – Trudy Ludwig
Brian always finds himself away from his classmates. No one ever tries to talk to him. One day a new kid comes and reaches out to Brian. They become close friends. The story presents Brain in “Black & White” colors at first. He gradually obtains more and more colours as everyone starts talking to him.
Moral Stories For Kids: Feeling left out is hurtful, so you should take the step and reach out to such kids around you.
15. Maddi’s Fridge – Lois Brandt
Two best friends, Maddi and Sofia, do everything together. But Maddi’s fridge is completely empty as compared to Sofia’s fridge.
Moral Stories For Kids: The story teaches the value of friendship and how we shouldn’t judge people without knowing their lives.
16. The Curious Garden – Peter Brown
A boy from a desolate city finds the tiniest garden. He works hard season after season to grow that garden and let it thrive.
Moral Stories For Kids: Things can seem hopeless, but it is mostly about your vision. If you are determined you can create beautiful things.
17. Beautiful Oops! – Barney Saltzberg
Mistakes are inevitable. But we all can turn them into beautiful outcomes with our own creativity and imagination. That is what this story is all about.
Moral Stories For Kids: If you keep on trying, it is fine to make mistakes.
18. The Most Magnificent Thing – Ashley Spires
An excited little girl tries hard to create the most magnificent thing. But she fails again and again. When she is about to quit, her friend convinces her to give it another try. And, she does it correctly this time.
Moral Stories For Kids: When you fail, feeling frustrated is common. But that shouldn’t restrict you from attaining your objective. Stop, think, plan and restart the process again.
19. A Chair for My Mother – Vera B. Williams
After losing the house in a huge fire, a girl, her mother and her grandmother save money to purchase a comfortable chair.
Moral Stories For Kids: Generosity is easy when everything is comfortable. It is important to feel generous when the time is against you.
20. Should I Share My Ice Cream? – Mo Willems
This short tale is about two friends Piggie and Gerald, who find difficulty in sharing things. And how to avoid that feeling and learn to share.
Moral Stories For Kids: Greed is a negative feeling and it is avoidable only if you share your experiences, happiness, and things with others.
21. Horrible Bear! – Ame Dyckman
A bear accidentally breaks a kite of a young girl. He is called a Horrible Bear due to this action. This becomes his new nickname. So, he decides to become what he is called. However, the girl soon realizes her own mistakes and understands that the Bear isn’t horrible at all.
Moral Stories For Kids: Perfection is a myth. Forgiving people for small mistakes is key to finding harmony in life.
22. The Needle Tree
The story revolves around two brothers. The elder brother is full of greed and very rude to his younger one until he faces with an excruciating experience. He comes across a tree in the forest, which owing to his greedy behaviors, showers him with needles. He cries out in pain when his younger sibling comes to his rescue. The incident turns his heart around and gives him a lesson for life.
23. The Boy who cried Wolf
A young boy bored with his daily work of grazing sheep and seeks some amusement.
He comes up with a prank to fool the villagers, wherein he shouts loudly crying for help saying his sheep are attacked by a wolf.
The villagers come running for two days as he continues to gain excitement at the cost of their kindness.
The third day, his sheep get attacked by a wolf for real. As he cries with all his might but this time no one runs to help because they assume it is going to be a prank again.
Moral Stories For Kids: Repeatedly fooling others could take a toll on your own life!
24. The Ant and the Grasshopper
The Ant and the grasshopper are two best friends but very different from each other. The grasshopper is a laid back relaxed one who just likes to play music without any hard work.
The ant, on the other hand, works hard all day to collect food while the grasshopper asks the ant to give it up and have a break.
As the winter approaches, it becomes very difficult to go out and fetch food. Since the ant has a lot of stock gathered from the days of toil, he is furnished enough to relax all winter in peace and enjoy his food.
Moral Stories For Kids: A few days of hard work and toil can bring in long days of peace.
Conclusion
You have 24 great short stories with morals. They are exciting and have interesting characters. At the same time, you get to teach important values to your kid
So, which story you liked the most?! Give a summary of some stories to your kid and let him or her decide which one to read. One by one, read all the stories to enhance exposure and let your kid learn important life values.