I am not ashamed to say I did not make the 50,000 word goal; but, I came close. I also achieved the main writing for our first middle grade novel in a series featuring our Fingerprint Fairies and a Thumbprint Troll characters. Well, now, I am planning for the next novel in the series.

Our main protagonist, Nell, has discovered a rare gift in her magic during the first adventure and now we need to see where it leads. Her “partner” in crime, Indy, needs to stretch his wings beyond the training level to the practical application of scouting and tracking. After all, there is still these strange creatures out there sucking up magic to figure out. Hmmmmm, this could be a story.

The difficult part for me is that my granddaughter’s birthday is in November; and of course, there is Thanksgiving! These all involve traveling several days. Which in this world of covid-19 takes a bit of caution and planning. Yeah, I know, with all these obligations, 50,000 words might only be a little crazy.

To join us at NaNoWriMo go to https://nanowrimo.org.

These misspellings can be typos like in for is or if for of and many more. Often they are the homonyms such as made and maid, lone and loan, or mail and male. Seems like all the electronic word processing spell checkers don’t catch these types of substitutions. Even the grammar ones don’t catch many of them.

I feel I have become so much more sensitized to this since I have been editing my own work. Yes, I have been using one of the spiffy editing word processing programs, one I even paid for! But, I am finding I have to still go over everything with a fine tooth comb. I think this is why I am so surprised to find so many copy editing errors in well known commercially published books. These are books that have been published internationally with well known authors going through the editing processes of well known publishing houses.

I have to say that I feel somewhat “smug” as it were as I have recently taken a few webinar courses from a few of the executive editors at a couple of these publishing houses. These webinars have been helpful and good learning experiences but the editors have been a might arrogant about their processes; so, I get a little frustrated when I am finding a few errors per chapter in a well known book from a well know publishing house. So, it goes to show that sew, sow, and so it goes with the editing regardless of who you are!

The really amazing part of the adventure is that each journey is still individual. Each child and adult comes away with a different experience even though they are reading the same story. I can hear the teachers out there right now going, “No, no, no, Colleen, I have planned exactly what I want my students to get from this story.” The parent is saying, “The back said I could teach my child how to apologize using this story.” Do you know for sure that your child identified with the character who learned to apologize or did they identify with the character who were being apologized to?

We all bring our own perspectives to a story. Yes, children have their own perspectives too. I know they have only been around a short time but they have done a lot of living in that time. They also haven’t built up as many filters and assumptions that, we, as adults, have in our perspectives. Kids have quite the fresh perspectives.

Listen to the children or child you are reading to. Let them tell the story to you in their way. You will learn what they are taking away from it. Don’t be surprised if all the children are not seeing the story’s message in the same light. Remember, the child and/or children are not wrong, just different.

Have a little fun, learning a little about your child’s or children’s perspectives. It is all in the journey.

I have strange feelings about this status as I worked long and hard to earn my credentials. As you know from prior posts, my interest in working with children began when I was a child. Yet, now I am looking at the road ahead being paved with my writing and creative projects.

Maybe my educator self and behavior analyst self will come out in my projects. I don’t know. I am excited to entirely focus on my creative roles. This means I can take the last steps to purge all my research files and materials to make more room for my creative resources.

Yes, I know I have been retired for almost four years but I still had those roles available to me with my official license status. As long as I maintained that status I still had those roles. Actually, now I feel free and really ready to celebrate this new me. Hooray!

Well that is almost everything; marketing anybody?

Educators, at times, also find teaching hard. They are rising to the challenge of teaching students through distant learning. This type of teaching is also not second nature to a lot of people, professional educators or not. Back in the 1970’s, the University I attended attempted to project real time live lectures from one lecture hall to another due to having so many students and not enough space in classes. Unfortunately, the University found that the students in the hall without access to the professor did not do as well as those in the hall with the professor. Now, a lot has changed since then and online learning is a huge industry.

The students now can interact with the teacher as well as with their classmates. It has become more personal and real than ever before. I feel that the hardest part for the teachers is the multi-tasking that takes place in the classroom to fit the lessons to each of the students. These operations are often minute and flexible. Many teachers do them so naturally that they do not even realizing that they are! Hard to observe a student nonchalantly when you are facing them through the camera.

Despite all these difficulties, I think the educators would want to invite the parents to hop on the joy train that motivates us. It is the joy of seeing a student “get it” and/or enjoy a lesson. The light in a child’s eyes who is learning. I see parents being proud of their students doing their lessons without complaint. But, I think the more important element is that parents see that they have the opportunity to experience a little of the joy in their child’s learning during this unique time.

I found it interesting that I did not realize how much I enjoyed going to other places to write. I went to different coffee shops, the bookstore, parks, and restaurants at least several times a week. Ironically, even when I worked in an office I would take my work with me to other places. I even had a restaurant near my work who would automatically give me the passcodes I needed to add two devices to the internet. They were quite nice about it.

I image that I seem to work better with the gentle roar of background noise especially people. If it is too quiet I seem to feel this pressure around me and I find myself “listening” to the silence. You say: “Well, play some music.” Then all of sudden I am dancing to the music or singing along and not writing at all. Music does work while I am cooking. I blame it on growing up with six siblings in small houses. Our rooms were actually not much more than beds; so, we did everything in the same room. You had to learn to concentrate in the chaos or you would never get anything done. I can’t say it wasn’t fun.

Now that I have all the space that I need and all the quiet that I could possible want, I go and write in coffee shops!

I am so thankful to have a home to keep me and my family safe. My heart goes out to those children and families where this is not so. I, too, have been in those circumstances as a child. To support the Corona virus challenge, I am staying home enjoying writing in the quiet. I am even making my own coffee! Mostly, I think about appreciating all that we have and supporting each other. Keeping yourself safe is keeping everybody safe. Let’s do this together.

It is a giant mistake to think in terms of “losing” weight. Let’s get real with ourselves. You don’t lose weight; you use it! What you just dropped the weight unknowingly and its lost somewhere. Well, you know, if that is what happened; the weight is just waiting for you to find it again.

Maybe that is why we “yo-yo” so much, losing and regaining it over and over again. The diet industry just loves this as it makes more money. We are in a mindset of “lost” not gone. If you use the fat energy to become lighter and more healthy then you haven’t lost the fat. It is gone. So, somehow, you have to convince your body to increase your metabolism by eating more healthy and exercising. These are not easy and happens better if done slowly over time.

I know how my body created more fat. I haven’t been exercising as much and I got a little more lax in my eating habits. It is simple but oh so complicated at the same time. The important thing is to acknowledge that I did not just “find” my lost weight somewhere. It wasn’t hiding in a closet or down in the basement or out in the garage. I made it from the way I was treating my body. This implies responsibility for working with our bodies how they are.

No, we are not all the same size so we will not be healthy at the same size even if you are the same height and build. Everybody is different so what is healthy for one person is not the same for another. However, please do not fool yourself that you just “found” your “lost” weight. Think in terms of using that fat you want to get rid of and you are on your way to truly getting healthy.

She had me turn the page back so that she could show where the animals were all sleeping giving me her special smile. That was a wonder. So, she was paying attention all along.

When I think about my own children as youngins. One taught himself to read before he was three. Another struggled to read and even as a teenager; if he was tired, he could read a whole sentence backwards phonetically correct. He learned his phonics perfectly but still couldn’t really read until the 5th grade. Even my third son struggled to acquire reading skills. He told the kindergarten teacher that he was not going to learn the alphabet in order because all the letters in the words were not in order. How do you argue with that!

Yet, now as adults, they all three read just fine. They enjoy reading in different ways. My son who could not read until the 5th grade does have dyslexia but that did not stop him from reading scripts to learn parts in plays. All of us have always enjoyed the structure of story and learning things through the written word. My children knew the access reading provided. Our story times including everything from a picture board book, Gray’s Anatomy (the book), to in-depth nonfiction books on sharks and dinosaurs. That was when they were one, three, and five. The wonder is that they all became artists. I wonder if it was the Gray’s Anatomy?

I think we have to have patience with our children when they are learning to read. Back to my granddaughter, she knows that these letters and groups of letters mean something. She runs her fingers along the text making up what they say. Her Poppy, my son with dyslexia, did those same things. How fast is she going to read? We don’t know yet.

There is a fine line between being supportive of the developmental process and pushing a child, even pre-determining when they should read. In my educational career I have seen to many children burnt out on reading before they even have a chance to enjoy story because they have been pushed with memorization lessons, toys focusing on academics, and the feeling of not being good enough because they are not reading yet. Keep reading to them and just enjoy the wonder of it all. Matter of fact pass the wonder on.

I had an amazing experience with one of my students and his family.  Let’s call him John (not his real name due to confidentiality laws). John loved books but through my home visit contacts I discovered that neither of his parents read to him.  Unfortunately John also struggled with behavior. He tried so hard at times to control his behavior that he shook! Although, I asked both parents (They were divorced.) to establish a nightly story time with him, only the father followed through.

At first John’s father was reluctant about the idea. However, after a few weeks, John’s father could not talk enough about it.  It wasn’t easy every time but John’s father told me that John now tried harder to listen to him and he felt that they were becoming closer too. What a testament to reading with your children!

Encourage every person you can, parent, grandparent, siblings etc. to have fun reading together.