Gutsy
Which friend of yours is gutsy? gutsy (guht-see) adjective with courage, pluck, or determination adventurous; undaunted, fearless I created this gutsy adjective art design for my youngest daughter. I was inspired by my daughter’s gutsy approach to life in spite of having a chronic disease. I wanted some art to remind her of how proud I am of her. Now I love seeing it in the background of her video chats and weekly family video calls. Adjective Art is a great gift for a friend, child, coworker, or teacher. This piece of art highlights and defines a specific adjective. Choose from 10 adjectives. Adventurous. Artsy. Capable. Classy. Determined. Generous. Gutsy. Inquisitive. Resourceful. Social. Adjective Art is available to download in my Etsy shop immediately upon purchase. The file is an 8×10 jpeg which can be downloaded and printed at home or at a printer of your choice. Grab a frame of your choice and you’ll have a quick, easy, and personal gift. Which adjective best describes your significant other? Print one for the desk. Which one best describes your child’s teacher? Print one for a thoughtful and personal teacher gift. Need a fun secret Santa gift? Adjective art is a…
Small Business Saturday
What small businesses can you support this week? The week of Thanksgiving is all about turkey and transactions. It’s the rush of getting all the dinner supplies (or at least the few things you were assigned to bring plus a hostess gift to apologize for not wanting to go to all the trouble to host this year) and weeding through all the Black Friday ads in your inbox and phone. In the age of online shopping, Amazon has been bookmarked and bots are hired to do your searching. Too bad there is not yet a robotic maid, housekeeper, and cook to take care of Thanksgiving dinner. Actually there are plenty of ways to support small businesses in your Thanksgiving week. Instead of ordering it all online or purchasing at a big box store, try getting a few items locally from small businesses. Buy local produce. Pick up a fresh pie or flowers from a local business. Hire a friend to help cook or clean this week. This Saturday is Small Business Saturday. It follows Black Friday and comes before Cyber Monday. Sometimes the joy of shopping is lost in the rush of Black Friday. Think about how you can support…
Four in a Row Game Board
Was Connect Four a favorite game in your childhood? Four in a Row is a simple game where the goal is to score four boxes in a row in any direction, yet it becomes a complex game when you apply strategies to keep the other player from scoring four in a row first! The supplies are minimal – a four in a row game board and two colored pencils. To help one of my tutoring clients be more engaged in reading and comprehending his spelling word patterns instead of just memorizing the letters, I pulled up a four in a row game board and typed in his spelling list. In order to score a box, he had to correctly pronounce the word on the first try. He likes a good competition so this challenge pulled him right in! Soon he was thinking more about a word and sounding out in his head before saying it. Typically I like students to go ahead and attempt hard words and process them aloud and ask for help when needed. However, this was the perfect challenge to push my client to the next level! If he said it wrong, he did not get the…
Table Talk Cards Especially for Advent
What does advent look like at your house? The word advent means coming or arrival. Advent starts the fourth Sunday before Christmas. Traditionally each week has a different theme: hope, peace, joy, and love. Many people have different traditions regarding Christmas and Advent. The purpose of Advent is to help us remain focused on the birth of Jesus Christ and our hope in His glorious return one day. For many, it is a joyful preparation for the Christmas season, a season of great hope. You all know I love to ask questions that get people thinking and talking. I especially love to ask questions around the table! I created Table Talk card sets to be conversation starters. Let me introduce my newest card set: Table Talk card set 4 – Especially for Advent. You can use the Table Talk questions at home, on a road trip, on a bus, in the classroom, at a family reunion, in line, on a video call, in carpool, and just about anywhere. Most of these questions do not have a correct answer. I always ask people to give me one reason to support their answer. This list is especially for Advent, which begins on…
Daily Writing Practice
How can you incorporation meaningful writing practice into daily life? Writer’s block tends to crop up every time students are given a time limit and a short writing project. They do well with week-long projects where they can think through things, but the short writes seem to stop them in their tracks. Getting started tends to be the biggest obstacle! Here are five suggestions for working writing into everyday life for students. Practice restating the prompt as a way to get started. One can always go back and strengthen the hook or opening statement at the end, but just get started by turning the prompt into the first sentence. Write often, even little things. Consider dictating your grocery list to your child or have them write down a phone message or note. Practice writing summaries of daily classes (great to use Cornel Note style and write a summary at the end) as a way to study. Use key vocabulary to strengthen the summary (great way to study for a test). The New York Times has weekly writing prompts for students. They can keep the writing in a journal or submit it online. (You don’t need a subscription to access the…
Libraries
When was the last time you visited a public library? The other day I had a half hour of time before an appointment so I stopped in at my local library to get some cookbooks for stepping up my weekly menu planning. I lost track of time and was almost late for my appointment. I forgot how much I loved free public libraries! Every season of my life has library memories, from filling a huge canvas bag of books as an elementary kid to checking out a big bag of books as a young mom with toddlers. We have Googled local libraries on rainy vacation days at the beach, visited library story times while traveling, and found joy in perusing the shelves of public libraries and bookstores across the country whether or not we take any books home. As a young mom, I got a new cookbook every time I took my kids to the library. Recently I had houseguests with school age kids for a few months and we took regular visits to the library where I told them they could get as many books as they could carry. Benjamin Franklin started his own lending library company in 1731…
Start Tutoring and Start Earning Extra Income
What are your roadblocks to earning some extra income as a tutor? What is standing between you and some extra cash? Time? Tools? Training? Need a few extra tools in your kit to feel confident tutoring clients? We each have unique talents and areas of expertise that others need help with. Everyone can tutor something! Now is the perfect time to get set up to start tutoring this fall. My free workshop Tutor Toolkit will push aside the roadblocks and get you going! This short helpful workshop will give you the tools needed to design and individualize tutoring sessions no matter what you teach. What’s in the FREE workshop Tutor Toolkit? In this workshop, I lay out the plan to setting up an hour long session, whether you are teaching, tutoring, or coaching. You get a behind-the-scenes look at my own tutoring sessions and learn from my years in and out of the classroom. You get customizable templates for sessions and the confidence you need to tutor or coach clients, whether you have teaching experience or not. You get tips and tools for remediation, extending lessons, and building rapport, plus games and brain break suggestions. No waiting for the workshop…
Work From Home
What are your best reasons to work from home? Freedom to travel and flexibility in my daily schedule are the two biggest benefits of working from home. While I loved being a teacher, I love being a private tutor, business owner, and resource creator even more! Working from home has been a life-changer for me! We each have reasons and roadblocks when it comes to working from home or changing careers. Not everyone can or would benefit from working at home. But have you ever considered the possibility? Or have you ever considered working for yourself? Have you ever wished you could do your job a little differently but your boss isn’t on the same page? Working for myself and working from home has allowed me the freedom to individualize instruction for my tutoring clients. I get a chance to tailor a session to the needs of my client. I love it when I can see the lightbulb come on for a student, where learning and confidence meet. These are things that were possibly inside the classroom but not as individualized or as often as I wanted them to be. The health needs of my aging parents and grandfather ultimately…
Business Basics
What business have you thought about launching? I used to wonder what it would take to start my own tutoring business and if I had the courage and energy to launch a business. I’m so glad I jumped on this roller coaster! It’s been a wild ride and a fun adventure. Now I want to help others get started. Are you ready to start your own tutoring, coaching, or lessons business? My course is here to help you launch your own business and to be your own boss. From start to finish, you will learn how to set up and grow a successful tutoring business that brings you joy and freedom. Every lesson teaches you what we are learning, why it’s important, and how to do it. You will also get examples of how to put the lesson into practice. There will be a brief quiz to see if you understood the material. You will then be given a few action steps to complete. The discussion board is where you can share your ideas and ask questions. It’s that simple! In this course Business Basics, you will have 12 lessons to open that should take 15-30 minutes each to complete,…
Be Your Own Boss
What would it look like to be your own boss? Being your own boss means you work for yourself. You carry all the heavy responsibilities, but you also celebrate all the personal and professional wins. It’s a roller coaster that many people are trying to decide if it’s worth getting in line for. Some of you have been on this ride. You know the ups and downs. Six percent of US employed people are self-employed and the average of self-employed workers worldwide is about 46% with variances across countries. For me, going into business for myself means that I have the freedom to set my own hours, and I can be available for my family whenever they need me. My former jobs have not been so flexible, and, when my aging parents needed my help, I ended up quitting my teaching job to help them out. Being my own boss provides me flexibility in my hours and my location. Since starting my own business I have worked at home, in coffee shops, at relatives’ houses, and across the globe. The COVID pandemic gave many people the opportunity to try working at home, but that still did not offer the flexibility…
