Free Children’s Short Stories With A Moral Lesson

Stories are one of the best ways to teach children lessons about life. They’re a way to convey to them how to live their best life without being preachy about it.

Some of the all time greatest stories of all time are ones that contain a clear moral lesson for the reader to discover.

What Are Moral Lessons?

A moral lesson is a teaching that is designed to help others be a better person. They are lessons designed to illustrate the right way to live life.

Some examples of morals

• Being respectful and courteous to others
• Practice what you preach
• Don’t be afraid of taking risks
• Being open-minded to new things
• Unless you’re willing to take risks, you cannot hope to achieve anything great
• Not hurting others
• Being generous with what you have
• He who does a thing well does not need to boast
• Your strengths, skills, and knowledge are useless if you are not in the right place.
• Nobody trusts a liar, even when he is telling the truth

Where Do These Lessons Come From?

Back during a time when humans didn’t have written languages, stories were a way to pass down important lessons. Lessons about what’s right and what’s wrong. Things you should do, and things you should avoid doing.

The kinds of lessons that would hopefully help their offspring to live longer, better lives.

By sticking ideas of good and bad behaviors inside of entertaining stories, the hope is that important lessons will be passed down to everyone who hears and retells those stories.

As an example, say I learn some hard life lesson of how to behave during my life. Maybe I let greed get in the way of enjoying life to its fullest.

By itself, it’s not the easiest lesson to relate to someone who hasn’t had the experience firsthand.

I might make it more relatable with a good story that gets the same idea across in a more entertaining way. I’d tell it to my kids this story and, Ideally, my kids will remember it and tell it to their kids. And so on.

Then they won’t have to learn the lesson of the ill-effects of greed the same way the original story teller did.

Since their kids who hear the story will hopefully take it to heart, they won’t have to make all the same mistakes as the original storyteller did. They’d have a head start and could do even better. And isn’t that the idea all decent parents have for their kids? For them to live their best life?

I think that’s the idea behind creating stories with moral lessons in them. Of course now we can write them down too, which makes things easier.

What Does it Mean to Have Morals?

To have morals means that you are type of person with the sense to know right from wrong and the strength to live your life in a way that is fair and good. If someone has a strong moral character it is a way of saying they are a good member of society.

Put another way, you are familiar with the kinds of moral examples we listed previously and try to follow them. You do this not because of some religious dogma or legal doctrine instructs you to, but because you feel it’s the right thing to do. 

The word moral comes from the Latin word mores, which means habits. The moral of a story is supposed to teach you how to be a better person.

Ethics are very similar to morals, but not exactly the same.

Both morality and ethics have to do with telling the difference between good and bad but ethics tend to be more of an academic topic and morals tend to be more of a personal thing.

Ethics tend to be more of an intellectual curiosity.

Some of Our Favorite Short Moral Stories For Kids

Stories today can be watched on YouTube or the like sure, but research shows again and again how important it is to read to children during their earliest years.

Here are some of our favorite kids stories with a moral lesson.

1. Cinderella

The well-known folk story of Cinderella tells of a young girl is unjustly mistreated by her step mother and step sisters after the death of her father. Because of her unwavering kindness to all and her strong spirit she eventually receives a great reward and a happy life. Many variants of this tale are known throughout all the cultures of the world.

Moral of The Cinderella: Cinderella teaches several different morals. Most importantly is to treat everyone with kindness and respect. It also teaches the moral of forgiving those who have wronged and not letting the bad in the world ruin the good in you.

2. The Princess and The Pea

Written by Hans Christian Andersen, The Princess and The Pea is about a young woman who is tested to see whether she is a princess or not by an experiment to judge her sensitivity. A small pea is placed under her mattress to see whether she can feel it. It is by this experiment that her royal identity is to be tested. The old queen does not believe the sopping wet girl found at the gate could be possibly a princess.

Moral of The Princess and The Pea: The fairytale of The Princess and The Pea teaches the reader the moral of not jumping to conclusions before you have all the facts.

3. Goldilocks and the Three Bears

The classic short story about a girl lost in the woods who encounters the empty home of 3 bears and makes herself at home in it.

Growing up I never really realized what the moral of this story was, but apparently it’s to teach children to respect the privacy of others. Violating the property of others can have consequences.

Moral of Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Respect the privacy and property of others or your actions might hurt others.

4. The Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing

This fable written by the prolific writer Aesop is a very quick read with an extremely valuable moral lesson.

A “wolf in sheep’s clothing” is a person that seems friendly, but might be out to harm you is a This commonly known idiom and a valuable lesson for adults and kids alike.

Doing harm to others, however, is not without consequences. As the wolf soon finds out.

Moral of The Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing: Seek to harm others and harm will come to you

5. Rapunzel

This hugely popular fairytale Rapunzel was originally written by the Brothers Grimm in their book, The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales Collection.

In their attempts to have a child, a king and queen anger an evil witch. This leads to their newly-born daughter being taken away by the witch and locked up in a tall tower for many years.

Moral of Rapunzel: If something is meant to happen, no one can stop that from happening, no matter how much power they have.

Chris Gannon

Chris Gannon is the creator of Story Yeti. He lives with his wife and two young daughters in Florida and likes reading and also olives.