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Cheap Ways to Prevent Summer Brain Drain

by Erin Shelby

 

Summer is here, which means a break from school for most kids. Did your child experience smooth sailing or nearly failing this school year? Either way, the “brain drain”  that happens during the summer – the normal loss of learning when kids are out for school – can be prevented, and you don’t need lots of money to keep your child learning . Here are three cheap ways to keep kids learning during the summer. 

#1 Create a Summer Journal 

Have your child create a summer journal and be sure that they include writing with every entry. Writing can help kids strengthen the vocabulary they already have and for kids learning to spell, it’s a great tool. Art can make it fun with a journal that includes drawings, sketches, or even clips from magazines, newspapers, or ads. 

#2 Use Your Library Card

Does each member of your family have a membership card to the public library? This is one of the easiest – and cheapest – ways to learn something new during the summer. One of the best-kept secrets of public libraries are their “digital resources” – the things you don’t even have to visit the library to get. Your library website may enable you to access eBooks, test prep materials, family tree information, TV, movies, and so much more, all for free.

#3 Go Old-School for Elementary School

Is your child more comfortable with technology than you are? Believe it or not, old-school solutions can still work for young kids. Visit your local dollar store and you’ll find ways to teach or tutor your child for the basics: colors, shapes, ABC’s, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and more. Summer can be the time to make progress with the help of these old-school tools!

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Goodbye 2020, Hello 2021!

by Andrea Elston

2020 is officially history and it’s hard to imagine that makes too many people sad. It was a tough one, in many ways, but there were also some great things that happened. For example, while we formed this company in the second half of 2019, it really started ramping up in early 2020. The first author we brought into the fold signed with us in April and we are thrilled to now have 14 members of the Shine-A-Light family with several others currently under consideration. We also published 14 manuscripts (not including the 4-6 freebies per month we have been putting on our site since September) this year and are excited about the 24 that are in the editing/formatting phases right now. Within our family, we are aware of 48 additional projects that are currently in the writing and/or development phases, too.

All of that makes the prospect of 2021 very exciting to us and we are intent on it being the year we build the support element of the family atmosphere. To aid in this process, we have reserved a private Facebook group and a new YouTube channel. We are hoping that the “members only” Facebook group can be a place where we are all able to communicate with one another and share ideas about how to promote our work. The YouTube channel will be a place to help us gain exposure. We would like to produce material that both private schools can use in chapels and educators in the classroom.

Speaking (or, writing) of exposure, we wanted to attend private school and homeschool conventions in 2020 but they all got cancelled due to COVID-19. We are currently signed up for an event here in Arizona scheduled for July, one in Tennessee scheduled for March and a third in April that will hopefully happen in Texas. There are others we also plan to attend in Florida, Colorado and New York. These conferences would be great exposure for Shine-A-Light as a company as well as for the whole family and their individual works. Please join us in praying that these opportunities are not taken away from us again this year. Especially now that we have built up a bigger inventory of great material and have so much more to offer.

Goodbye, 2020. You weren’t all bad. Cheers to 2021!

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Teamwork, Drive, and Winning: What’s Music Education Got to Do With It?

by Erin Shelby

In the Netflix documentary The Road I’m On, country super star Garth Brooks recounts his childhood and his rise to fame. He recalls a particular instance when his father insisted that Garth join something, anything. You have to be part of a team, any team, was his father’s directive. As a result, young Garth played high school football. Do music and sports seem like polar opposites to you? If so, consider these three things that sports and music have in common.

Teamwork

Anyone who’s played sports knows that it takes more than one person to win the game. Teamwork is critical, and this also applies to music. Soloists with attention-getting personalities often get the spotlight, but they don’t earn this praise alone. Back-up singers, dancers, drummers, instrumentalists, lighting designers, and vocal coaches all create the magic for the chart-topping celebrities we know and love. Students who have music as part of their education learn that teamwork is a must. Choir singers learn the art of the “blend” when each singer isn’t too loud or too soft, but just right. Band players practice alone and then come together as a whole to work on their sound as a group. Whether in choir, band, or orchestra, each music student is part of a larger team. 

Drive

Goals and desires are easy to have, but it takes drive to accomplish what you want. Wishful thinking won’t make things happen; action is required. In sports, if you don’t show up for practice, you’re destined to fail. If you show up with a bad attitude or a half-hearted attitude, your practice won’t do much good. The same goes for music. Each person in a group brings their abilities and desire to succeed. Talent alone isn’t good enough; you have to work for what you want. Choirs learn this together by practicing parts of the same songs over and over again to achieve the desired sound. A three-minute song takes hours upon hours to learn. Band members will refine the same section of music because a note is played too soon, or a rest lasts too long, or instruments sound out of balance with each another. Each person’s drive pushes them to create a work of excellence.

Success

The joy of winning is easy for bystanders to see. In sports, winning can come in the form of trophies or the number on the scoreboard. Those who stand on the sidelines may not know the frustration, fatigue, and effort that it took to make it happen. For musicians, wins are just as valuable, although they come in different forms. The applause and cheers from our audiences show that we created something good. The reward of knowing that we gave our best and created something worthwhile to is a reward in itself. Personal growth happens when we persevere through obstacles, and we often learn about ourselves along the way.

Young people will always need to learn about teamwork, drive, and success. These are enduring concepts that need to be passed on to each new generation. The importance of music education is three-fold: it teaches teamwork, it emphasizes the importance of drive, and it celebrates success. How can you celebrate these ideals in a young person’s life?

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My Thoughts on these “Unprecedented Times” in Education

by Andrea Elston

 

I really struggled with how to start this blog post. I wanted it to be encouraging and informational, but to be honest, I am so tired of “we’re all in this together,” and “we’ll get through this.” Quite frankly, if I hear the words “these unprecedented times” on one more commercial, I may actually throw the remote at the TV. I did not want it to be yet another piece of media pushing an agenda and telling parents what they should  do about their child’s education, or telling teachers what amazingly helpful tips I have for distance learning, should that be the case in the fall. To be honest, I am currently neither!

 I am not a parent, and although I spent 20 years in the classroom and will always be a teacher at heart, I did not have to endure the abrupt switch to remote learning and all the logistics that accompanied it this year. I also did not want to send a bunch of links to multiple online resources! From what I can tell, parents and teachers are already getting inundated with those from countless other company websites, forums, organizations, etc. I figured you are all “linked out” by now! I would be! So for my first blog post, I am going to just share my thoughts from the heart.

Parents, whether you choose for your child(ren) to be educated through traditional or non-traditional methods next year, it will be the right choice. You know your child, you know your circumstances, and you know what’s best for your family. Fortunately, we live in a country where we are free to make that choice and, as has been proven by these unprecedented times (I couldn’t help myself), there are a plethora of resources out there to support your decision.  When it comes right down to it, all children are homeschooled. It doesn’t matter whether they attend a public school, private school, charter school, online school, co-op, or an actual homeschool program, education begins in the household. Parents are the teachers and life is the curriculum. My encouragement to you this summer is to continue homeschooling your children. Use resources if you wish, but the bottom line is, if you have created your “classroom” as a place that operates on  love, standards, boundaries, consequences, follow-through, safety, trust, and respect, your “students” will flourish no matter what school looks like for them in the coming months.

Teachers, I don’t know how you did it! I am so impressed by what I saw and heard from my friends and colleagues that were in the trenches every day, trying to figure out what to do just to survive, first of all, but then how to improve as the year went on. I know teachers are innovative, but this event took everything to a whole new level! My encouragement to you this summer is to relax and revel in your accomplishments! Again, there is much uncertainty about the next school year, more or less depending on where you live, but as a whole, teachers and administrators have shown that they can handle whatever comes their way to create an educational environment, whether physical or virtual, for students to thrive!

Bottom line, the mission of Shine-A-Light Press will always be to provide supportive and supplemental resources to help educate the next generation…in whatever capacity and from whatever location! Whether you are an administrator looking to give your staff all the resources you can to help them succeed, a teacher looking for another fun and creative way to reach your students, or a parent wanting to take advantage of any and all educational materials out there, Shine-A-Light Press is committed to providing products that give you those options!

Don’t ever hesitate to contact me directly with questions, comments, suggestions, and thoughts. And rest assured, I have plenty of favorite resources and links to share in the future!

Andrea Elston
andrea@shinealightcorp.com

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Welcome to Shine-A-Light Press

Shine-A-Light Corp, a multi-media company striving to “shine-a-light” in a world with far too much darkness, is pleased to announce the launch of Shine-A-Light Press. Founded by a husband and wife team who are combining their twenty years of experience, Andrea’s running a classroom and Chris’ as both a film/television writer and an author, Shine-A-Light Press is producing both books and educational curricula for preschool through high school.

Our commitment is to provide quality curriculum, supplementary material, and literary works that can easily be integrated into your current curriculum and used as either read-alouds or simply for personal enjoyment. You will find that our educational resources exceed most widely accepted learning standards, but many are aligned with state standards and/or Common Core for certification purposes.

The products offered by Shine-A-Light Press are available in both hard copy and digital formats and can be purchased in our public store or are included in our various membership packages. Whether you are a single-family with one child in second grade, a homeschooling co-op serving several grade levels, or a P-12 school with 800 students, there is a membership level that applies to you and a price tag that matches appropriately.

Memberships grant the account holder access to the digital material appropriate for their membership level, including early access to new products up to a month before they become available in the store. A perfect example is our new book “The Four Corners of Darkness” which will be available in the store at the end of the month but is currently available as an eBook to our upper elementary, middle school, and premier membership levels. New products that arrive during the annual membership cycle are added to the membership at no additional charge to the account holder. Plus, every member has an automatic 15% discount on all products in the store, site wide.

We have many products planned beyond what you can currently see in the store. Many of which will show up in the next few months. More are already on the calendar to debut in the months that will follow. Our inventory will continue to grow but we are committed to maintaining a personal, small-business level of customer service and family atmosphere. We look forward to getting to know you, serving you, and want to start by saying, “Welcome to the Shine-A-Light family!”