Compassion

"Let me be a little kinder,
 Let me be a little blinder
 To the faults of those around me,
 Let me praise a little more."
           ~ Edward Guest

This week was the start of our 2009/2010 school year.  We are starting early because I would like to take November and December off when our baby boy is born.  My main goal for this week is to focus on character education and I picked the virtue of compassion.  Christopher and Emily have been fighting constantly and they are driving me crazy.  I know that our school year will be much more pleasant if they can learn to show each other a little compassion.  Hopefully this will work!  I have incorporated copy work of the above quote in cursive, a little grammar and reading aloud of short stories illustrating compassion.  We are also reading from the bible about how Jesus showed compassion and memorizing the Prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.  Where
there is injury, pardon.  Where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope.  Where there is darkness,
light, and where there is sadness, joy.  O divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to
console; To be understood, as to understand; To be
loved, as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.  And it is in dying
that we are born to eternal life.