Peace Begins With You

Peace Begins with You is a simple story about the different ways of defining and achieving peace. Australian author Katherine Scholes begins the story at a personal level by talking about how peace feels in our everyday lives. The title is extraordinarily fitting for how children, and adults will feel after reading this book. The choices we make affect not only us as individuals, but also the world as a whole.

Enrichment Activities

• Connecting Peace
  Ask individual students the following questions:
  • What color is peace?
  • What kind of weather is peace?
  • What animal is peace?
  • What sound is peace?
  • What holiday is peace?
  • What form of transportation is peace?
  Then have students come up with similar questions.
  
  
• Empathy and Peace-Building Activities
  Use these activities with young children to help them learn more about each other.
  
  
• Peaceful Solutions
  Ask students to talk about a conflict going on in their life right now and to describe it without using names. Then ask them to brainstorm a peaceful solution.
  
  
• Peaceful Writing
  Write the words "Peace is" on chart paper and have students list words that make them feel peaceful. Then have the kids draw a picture and write a story about a time when they felt peaceful.
  
  
  

Internet Resources

Ideas for Peace at School and In Your Neighborhood
Grade Levels: All
Great ideas for making the world around you a more peaceful place. http://www.planetpals.com/IKC/spreadpeace.html

Peace Corps
Grade Levels: All
Share some of the stories on this website with your students and encourage them to post their own.
http://www.peacecorps.gov/kids/difference/your_words.html

Peace Songs and Images
Grade Levels: All
A collection of songs and images having to do with peace.
http://www.planetpals.com/IKC/Isongs.html

Quotes on Friendship, Peace, and Prejudice
Grade Levels: All
Learn what famous people, authors and poets have said about peace, prejudice, and friendship.
http://www.planetpals.com/IKC/IKC_quotedictionary.html

Books by Katherine Scholes

The Blue Chameleon
Grade Levels: Intermediate, Middle
A story of an adolescent boy who is uprooted from desert life in North Africa and moved to metropolitan Australia. Ben's search for his missing twin brother then leads him to Antarctica.

The Landing: A Night of Birds
Grade Levels: Intermediate, Middle
The annual migration of the Tasmanian muttonbird is the motivation for this survival story. It includes a bit of mystical fantasy, as the birds tell their story in verse and poetic prose.

Peacetimes
Grade Levels: Intermediate
A story about the difficulties humanity has had getting along throughout history, and what we have been able to learn from it.