Word of the Month
October

COURAGE: Meeting a challenge without giving in to fear  
Vs. Showing fear
EspanÕl- valor

**Please review the following suggestions for content and appropriateness to your child and/or student/s**

Song:
I Hope You Dance 

Suggested Reading:  

David and Goliath
Wagon Wheels (Barbara Brenner)
Daniel in the Lion's Den
The Magic Tapestry: A Chinese Folktale (Demi)
The Lotus Seed (Sherry Garland)
The Sabbath Lion (Howard Schwartz)
Theseus and the Minotaur
The Story of Ruby Bridges (William Coles)
The Courage of Sarah Noble (Alicia Dalglies)
William Tell (Margaret Early)
Number the Stars (Louis Lowry)
Frederick Douglas: The Last Day of Slavery (William Miller)
The Door in the Wall (Marguerite de Angeli)
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Robert O'Brien)
Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O'Dell)
Harry Potter (series) J.K. Rowling
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Retold by Selina Hastings)
The Castle in the Attic (Elizabeth Winthrop)
The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
Julie of the Wolves (Jean Craighead George)
A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle)
The Hero and the Crown (Robin McKinley)
Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O'Dell)
Bridge to Terabithia (Katherine Paterson)
A Day No Pigs Would Die (Robert Newton Peck)
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (series) J.R.R. Tolkein
Pocahontas: Daughter of a Chief (Carol Greene)
The Boy Who Held Back the Sea (Lenny Hort)
Irene Brave (William Steig)
Lon Po-Po: A Red Redinghood Story from China (Ed Young)
Chrysanthemum (Kevin Henkes)
Alfie Gives a Hand (Shirley Hughes)
Cecil's Story (George Ella Lyon)
Ira Sleeps Over (Bernard Waber)
Henny Penny (Jane Wattenberg)
The Berenstain Bears Get Stage Fright
The Berenstain Bears Go to School
One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo
Jackie Robinson
The Little Engine that Could
How to Eat Fried Worms
The 500 Hats of Barthelemew Cubbins
The Giving Tree
What's Under my Bed?
Swimmy  
The Story of Helen Keller  
Call it Courage  
The Red Badge of Courage  
The Patriot
Acts of the Apostles 18:15
The True Confession of Charlotte Doyle (Avi.)
The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank)
Hatchet (Gary Paulsen)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
Ryan White: My Own Story (Ryan White)

Suggested Film:  
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington not rated 
To Kill a Mockingbird not rated
Remember the Titans rated PG-13

Family Activity:

• Parents can recall a time when they overcame a challenge.

• Talk to your children about moral courage and doing what they believe to be right, even when their friends want them to do something else.

• Tell your children about a person whose courage you admire.

• Tell your children about family members who have done courageous things.

• Help your children to have the courage to try new things by exposing them to something new every week this month. New things might include: Rocky Hollow Recreation Center, Public Library, Civil War site in Nancy, a church, synagogue, temple (where they practice a religion other than your family’s) to show your children that if they have the courage to explore something new they will find that it is seldom as strange, scary, or boring as they think.

• Help your children overcome a fear this week.

Class Activity: 

• Students face difficult decisions about whether or not to use alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. These decisions are often complicated by peer pressure. Discuss the courage involved in saying no to drugs. Make sure your children know where you stand against drugs. 

• Talk about peer pressure in general. It is often easier to do something you know is wrong, than it is to not do it when others want you to. Discuss why people should say no and do what they know is right.

• Each week have a part of the class read their compositions to the class. Make sure the class understands that they need to be polite to the people reading. This will help students get used to public speaking, and overcome, or even prevent a fear of public speaking.

• Have students put on skits depicting a student resisting pressure from their peers to use drugs.  

High School Activity:

• Invite a veteran to speak to your class about his or her experiences while serving in the military or share your own experiences with your class.

• What is the difference between moral and physical courage? Is one more important than the other?

• Invite a police officier to talk to the class about what he or she does and how they deal with fear.

• Fear of public speaking is one of the most widespread fears among all age groups: you can help your students to overcome it. You may have students give a speech for their senior project. Provide them lots of practice. Require that every student give several oral reports to the class during the year. Talk to your student about basic techniques in public speaking, including the use of note cards and looking just over the head of the last row of people to help them get through it. Give them enough practice that they begin to feel more comfortable each time they make a presentation.

• Invite a survivor of the Holocaust or POW to talk to the class about their experience and the courage they witnessed and possibly experienced.

• Have students write about what they would do if something similar to the Holocaust happened to them.  

Quotes:

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it."
-John Steinbeck

"One should count each day a separate life."
-Seneca

“Courage is the most important of all virtues, because without courage, you cannot practice any of the other virtues consistently.”
-Maya Angelou

“The greatest mistake a person can make is to be afraid of making one.”
-Elbert Hubbard

“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself."
-President Franklin Delano Rossevelt

“I’d rather give my life, than be afraid to give it.”
-President Lyndon Johnson

“In order for evil to succeed it is only necessary for good men to do nothing.”
-Edmond Burke

“Life is a voyage of discovery, not a safe harbor.”
-British historian, Arnold Toynbee

“It is our earnest prayer to serve America in peace. It’s our solemn commitment to defend her in a time of war.”
-President Ronald Reagan"

"The bomb attack...was an attempt to cripple Her Majesty’s democratically elected government. The fact that we are gathered here now, shocked, but composed and determined, is a sign not only that this attack has failed, but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.”
-British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, after surviving an IRA assassination attempt

“Courage is being scared to death – and saddling up anyway.”
-John Wayne, late 20^th century actor

"No one reaches a high position without daring.”
-Syrus

“Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or we grow weak, and at last some crisis shows us what we have become.”
-Bishop Westcott

"I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things [they] fear to do, provided [they] keep doing [them] until [they] get a record of successful experiences behind [them].”
-Eleanor Roosevelt

“The art of living lies not in eliminating, but in growing with troubles.”
-Bernard M. Baruch  

“Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what nerves let you do.”
-Bruce Crampton

“It isn’t the absence of conscience or values that prevents us from being all we should be, it is simply the lack of moral courage.”
-Michael Josephson

"To see what is right and not do it is cowardice.”
-Confuscius

"One man with courage makes a majority.”
-Andrew Jackson

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
-William Shakespeare

“Courage easily finds its own eloquence.”
-Plautua

“In times of stress, be bold and valiant.”
-Horace

"What worries you, masters you.”
-Haddon W. Robinson

"The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hardest part is doing it."
-Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Perform a Random Act of Kindness Each Day