About the Author:
Cecilia’s greatest treasures are her faith, family and friends. Her love for working with children spans many decades as a home educator, in ministry and in the classroom. She has been married to her husband Steve for over thirty-six years. They have three adult sons, three lovely daughters-in-love and four sweet granddaughters. Cecilia lives in the majestic Rim Country of northern Arizona and enjoys hiking, kayaking and line dancing with friends.
Cecilia’s Book:
About the Author:
Anni has been involved in education all her life. After graduating from Arizona Christian University, she got a job teaching elementary students and never looked back. She and her husband helped start a classical school in northern Arizona and now their four daughters also attend. In her “spare” time she has been known to write plays, poems, and curriculum.
First Name Acrostic:
A mother, daughter, sister, wife
Needs more time to read amazing books
Native arizonan
Iinstruments include, piano, bass, guitar, and ukulele
Travel Bucket List Items:
In the U.S.A. – Alaska, Hawaii and Delaware (because then she will have been to all 50 states)
Outside the U.S.A. – the British Isles
Adventure – seeing the aurora borealis
An accomplishment she’s proud of:
She recently learned how to lay and grout tile.
Favorites:
Author – Hannah Anderson
Date Night – anything involving a hamburger
Tea – peach
Way of Shopping – thrifting
TV Series – The Chosen
Coming Soon:
Copycatting Our Creator
About the Author:
Stacy Leicht was born and raised in Michigan, but her extended family is from Mississippi, so she likes to say, she was raised in the north with a southern frame of mind. As an educator, Stacy taught many grades, but most recently taught at the university level supervising future teachers.
Stacy and her husband Rick live near the North Carolina coast and love spending time with their grown children and two grandchildren.
Stacy enjoys teaching water aerobics, snorkeling, and anything pertaining to beach life. She is an avid reader and enjoys writing both children’s books and adult suspense novels.
First Name Acrostic:
Swimmer
Teacher
Always looking on the bright side
Compassionate
Young at heart
Travel Bucket List Items:
In the U.S.A. – I would love to travel to Rhode Island to see the small coastal towns.
Outside the U.S.A. – I would love to travel to Wales and Scotland where my family ancestors were from.
An accomplishment she’s proud of: As a teacher, I feel like I made a difference in the lives of many of my students. I stay in contact with many of them and enjoy hearing about their lives.
Favorites:
Movie – The Shawshank Redemption
Food – Spaghetti
Drink – Coke
Childhood Pastime – Riding bikes and swimming
Music – We the Kingdom
Website: https://stacyleicht.com/
Coming Soon:
Good One, God
Dear Teacher, I’m Watching You
About the Author:
Brad has been an active-duty Army Chaplain for over twenty-five years and will retire in June of 2024. He and his wife, Lori, have been married for more than thirty-two years and have six loving children. Their first grandchild is due in March of 2024. Their fifth child, Kaydan, was born with Down syndrome and later diagnosed with autism. The journey through the special needs world has not been an easy one but has also been one of rich experiences of God’s grace and faithfulness. Out of that journey was born the idea for “Walking with Kaydan: A journey of faith, struggle, and hope,” Brad’s first book that chronicles the challenges as well as the victories in the special needs world. As Brad enters retirement, he has plans to establish the Special Needs Marriage and Family Institute as a ministry and academic partnership in the Nashville area.
“Family Photos”
Website: www.walkingwithkaydan.com
Coming Soon: Walking with Kaydan: A journey of faith, struggle, and hope
Maxine’s Books:
* For more information on her book and/or the accompanying activity packet, click the pics above
About the Author:
First Name Acrostic:
Mother of three
Always chasing Jesus
X-ray my heart, Lord
Immigrant, so I love America
Never giving up
Ending up on a small farm, someday
Travel Bucket List Items:
In the U.S.A. — Yellowstone National Park
Outside the U.S.A. — Vietnam caves
An adventure — “I hate heights so I think zip-lining over a forest canopy would be nice.”
An Accomplishment She’s Proud Of:
After years as a stay-at-home mom, I pivoted my way back into the work force to help pay for my kids’ college tuition. I is a different way of taking care of my children, but I feel proud knowing they won’t be saddled with debt as they start building their futures.
Five Favorites:
Movie – The Princess Bride
Childhood Gift – Being brought to America
Coffee Drink – Anything with a hazelnut creamer
Book – The Wind in the Willows, still
Season – Fall
Andrea’s Books:
* For more information on her books, click the pics above
About the Author:
Andrea Elston was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She has taught at the elementary level for 20+ years and also creates educational resources for Shine-A-Light Press. She and her husband Chris live in Prescott Valley, Arizona and love seeing the sky for more than 3 months out of the year!
First Name Acrostic:
A born-again believerNorthwest native, Arizona transplantDrinks way too much coffeeResponsible (or at least tries to be)Educator and…Advocate for truth
Travel Bucket List Items: Statue of Liberty, Quebec or Paris (anywhere she can practice her high-school French,) and somewhere to see the northern lights and stay in an ice-hotel.
An Accomplishment She’s Proud Of: She just recently made over 200 desserts for her niece’s wedding, turning a fun hobby into something that was able to bless the happy couple. It was definitely challenging, especially since it was 100 degrees that day (quite uncharacteristic for Washington in June), but she made it work!
Five Favorites:
Movie: The Fugitive
Childhood Gift: a Cabbage Patch preemie named Caroline Tabitha
Coffee Drink: Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte
Season: Fall
Book: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
“Family Photos”
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!
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!
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?
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
