Friday, May 26, 2017

BRAVERY CAN COME IN ANY SIZE







There are some kids who think you have to be as tall as a mountain to be BRAVE. But what about kids who are as small as a mouse? Does that mean they can't be BRAVE because of their size? 

Read the story of the lion and the mouse below, then decide what size BRAVERY comes in...

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The Lion and the Mouse

A small mouse crept up to a sleeping lion. The mouse admired the lion's ears, his long  whiskers and his great mane.

"Since he's sleeping," thought the mouse, "he'll never suspect I'm here!"  

With that, the little mouse climbed up onto the lion's tail, ran across its back, slid down its leg and jumped off of its paw. The lion awoke and quickly caught the mouse between its claws.

"Please," said the mouse, "let me go and I'll come back and help you
 someday."

The lion laughed, "You are so small! How could ever help me?"

The lion laughed so hard he had to hold his belly! The mouse jumped to freedom and ran until she was far, far away.

The next day, two hunters came to the jungle. They went to the lion's lair. They set a huge rope snare. When the lion came home that night, he stepped into the trap.

He roared! He wept! But he couldn't pull himself free.

The mouse heard the lion's pitiful roar and came back to help him.

The mouse eyed the trap and noticed the one thick rope that held it together. She began nibbling and nibbling until the rope broke. The lion was able to shake  off the other ropes that held him tight. He stood up free again!

The lion turned to the mouse and said, "Dear friend, I was foolish to ridicule you for being small. You helped me by saving my life after all!" 


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Like the mouse in this story, it doesn't matter how big or how small you are when it comes to being able to help others. All that matters is that you help...


 

Friday, May 12, 2017

MAY THE FORCE BE GENEROUS...








One of the most important lessons small children learn is how to share. 

Share their toys.

Share a parent's love.

Share time on the Xbox.

But being GENEROUS with our time, emotions, or things isn't always easy. Maybe you don't want to let the kid next door play with your stuff. Maybe finding out you're going to be a big brother or a big sister has you wondering if your parents are still going to love you as much as the new baby. And maybe you just want to have a few more minutes to beat the game.

Sharing doesn't have to mean giving up everything. Being GENEROUS with your toys just might give you a chance to make a new friend.

Learning how to be a Big Brother or a Big Sister might give you a chance to show your parents how grown up you've become.

And having to wait to catch the bad guy on a video game just might teach you how to have a little patience.

Take a few minutes to read this week's story about two angry brothers who didn't know how to be GENEROUS with each other, until it was almost too late to learn.
 
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TWO ANGRY BROTHERS

Once there were two brothers who were great friends and always played together. However, one day they had a huge argument about one of their toys. In the end, they decided that from then on they would only be allowed to play with their own individual toys.

They had so many toys and things that they agreed to spend the next day sorting out which toy belonged to whom. So the next day each brother got to work, making a pile of his own things. When they had finished doing the big toys it was time to sort the little stuff. However, they had already taken so long that it was time for bed, so they left the small toys for the next day. The same thing happened the next day, because they had started dividing up parts of the house.

Day after day it was the same story. They were spending their whole time deciding what, among all kinds of things, belonged to either one of them.

Anything would set them off: seeing an animal, a tree, or even a stone. In the end, they had accumulated two complete mountains of stuff which had to be kept out in front of the house.

As the years passed, nothing changed: every morning they would meet up to argue about which things belonged to whom. They were getting older, and everyone now knew them as "the grumpy old men". No one had ever seen them smile.

That was, until one morning they went out and found that their two mountains of stuff had been totally mixed up together. Someone had been there, mixing their things up! After all that time and effort they had spent to separate everything!

Furious, the brothers tried to find who had done it. Soon they found a pair of children playing on the other side of the mountains of stuff. They were happily playing together, picking everything up, careless of whether they were mixing it all together. They looked really happy, enjoying themselves to the max.

Seeing the children so happy, the two grumpy old brothers realized how foolish they had been for so many years. They had given up playing with anything, instead spending their whole lives arguing over what was theirs to play with. How sad they felt, for spending their lives in anger. At the same time, though, they were happy to have finally realized their foolishness.

They spent that day, and the rest of their days, playing together with those two children, mixing everything up, and sharing it all. People even stopped calling them the grumpy old men. Now people called them the 'Big Kids'.

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When you think about it, wouldn't you want to be known as the Big Kid too?



Friday, May 5, 2017

WORDS THAT HURT OR HEAL...







You can probably remember a time when someone did or said something that hurt your feelings and before you knew it, harsh words were thrown at them or even worse.


You really didn't mean what you said.


And now your friend won't talk to you.


SELF-CONTROL is something children (and some adults) have a hard time not only understanding what it means, but also how to maintain it when LIFE frustrates them. The story below is about one young boy and the scars that can be left behind when we choose to lose our SELF-CONTROL...



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THE FENCE


There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the fence.


The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily, gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally, the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pulls out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.


The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said “you have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one.”


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Writers aren't the only people with power over words. What we say can cut just as deeply as a knife and the hurt feelings left behind can take a life time to heal. 


The next time someone in your life accidentally does something that hurts your feelings, just stop and think...


HOH?


Hurt.


Or.


Heal.


The choice is yours. You can either exercise SELF-CONTROL and rein in your temper, or you can spend time looking at the scars your words may have caused...