The start of the school year is an exciting time—full of energy for learning and starting new subjects, books, and more. But it also comes with a change from casual summers to more routines and structured rhythms. And that can be a hard adjustment! As the learning gets underway, September’s character focus is diligence: committing to doing tasks with excellence and persevering with determination and patience to complete tasks in spite of difficulties and discouragement. Learning to do our best even when it’s tough is a valuable lesson that has a lot of pay off!

An easy catch phrase reminder this month:

If you want to start a discussion with your children about diligence and reflect on its meaning (or pick a quiet morning to personally reflect and journal while sipping your morning brew), consider these questions below to encourage this month’s character trait:

• • • Discuss/contemplate the above definition of diligence—focus on the meaning of the words commitment, perseverance, and determination.
    • Why is diligence an important character trait? Imagine a world where no one ever followed through.
    • Why should you commit to doing tasks with excellence? Are there times when just finishing is enough?
    • What are some tasks that you have to do every day? Do you do them with diligence?
    • What is the hardest thing you have to do these days?
    • When you think about giving up, what keeps you going?
    • Think of a character from a book that demonstrated perseverance and diligence. What did they do when they faced difficulties or discouragement?
    • “Do your best!”—is everyone’s best the same?
    • Discuss this Benjamin Franklin quote, “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” How does this compare with Aristole’s quote below:

Another wonderful and simple way to begin this month with your child(ren) is to read books that show diligence in action—check our book list HERE!

Another way to keep this character trait of the month top of mind is to print and hang our Diligence poster! Click here to download.

Want more resources? Read Teaching Character Through Literature: Diligence.