I was recently asked to write a guest post on Kathie Morrisey’s Character Corner blog about encouragement. (You can read that article here on the blog!) When I sat out to write encouraging words, I came back to what I always come back to–prioritizing leads to encouragement. I can encourage myself by setting my priorities and following through on them. It’s true….it has happened to me countless times during my thirty-two years of homeschooling and continues to happen to me now as an entrepreneur and online teacher. So I wrote my article for Character Corner–and decided to make a video to follow it up. I hope that this prioritizing help encourages you as much as it has me throughout my parenting years.

Before I give you the outline, I’d like to leave you with some other tools to help you in your encouragement and prioritizing journey:

1) Podcast: Overcoming Obstacles in Parenting

2) Wondering Wedensday–Foundations for Becoming an Efficiency Expert in Your Home

3) My Organization Beginnings: Do the Dailies!

4) 5 Influences to Determine Your Priorities

5) Video: How to Prioritize

Here’s a short outline for this video, Finding Encouragement Through Prioritizing:

A. Introduction–Priorities are what I did that day

1. I did my priorities

2. I did my dailies

3. Priorities are not always exciting and grandeur

4. Priorities start with the things we do every day to make our home a success

5. Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

B. Prioritize Your Day

1. Most important things first each day

2. Put things that need done every single day in the first part of the day and don’t do anything before them

3. Delighting in Dailies Part I (here) and Part II (here)

C. Make list of Priorities and Attach Actions

1. Priority is a priority if we do it; if not, it is a wish

2. Priorities are the final outcomes; list of habits/actions are the way we will reach priorities

3. If we do not do something consistently, it is not a priority–only the things on our calendars and checkbooks are priorities

D. Put the Actions That Help Us Meet Priorities in Daily Schedule

1. Daily, weekly, monthly priorities need actions to make them happen

2. Put these actions down in daily schedule, calendar, planner, etc.

3. These actions should come ahead of everything else

The post Video: Finding Encouragement Through Prioritizing appeared first on Character Ink.

The Checklist Challenge (CC), a challenging checklist of editing tasks, is included in ninety percent of the assignments in all one hundred of my books. It is taught extensively in the first couple lessons in each first semester Meaningful Composition book for grades 4 through 9 (and books 2 and 3 have lessons scattered throughout them). There are even downloads teaching nothing but how to complete this amazing editing tool (I really love the CC!).

But it has recently come to my attention that teachers really want help in scoring it. I mean, is a colorful paper enough? What about every box checked off? How about great adjectives and adverbs sprinkled throughout?

So, I have created a video that will at least get you started in how to grade your student’s CC—how to teach them to code it thoroughly, what a completed CC paper looks like, how to cross check the chart (and its check boxes for each task) with the student’s paper, how to total a score up, and much more.

I hope this video helps you see how you can quickly and efficiently score your student’s CC—and how the CC can be used as an incredible writing improvement tool at all grade levels.

How to Grade the Checklist Challenge

Love and hope,

The post How to Grade the Checklist Challenge appeared first on Character Ink.

 

 

September/October FREE IF WEBINARS—Choose the Date/Time That Works for You!

 

Thursday, September 26th @ 8:00pm Eastern Time

Sunday, September 29th @ 9:00pm Eastern Time

Tuesday, October 1st @ 10:00am Eastern Time

Wednesday, October 2nd @ 8:00pm Eastern Time

 

Do you long to manage your weight while still enjoying birthday parties, weddings, showers, family dinners, and other special occasions?

Do you wish you could meet your fitness goals while still enjoying social events and nights out to your favorite spots?

Do you love to vacation and enjoy the local cuisine without guilt?

What about health…..have you heard the amazing health, anti-aging, longevity, immune-boosting, muscle-restoring, and disease prevention benefits of Intermittent Fasting?

Daily Intermittent Fasting (IF) might be the exact weight management, health, and fitness program for you….and you can find out for sure in my FREE webinar, “10 Intermittent Fasting Questions.”

In this webinar, Donna Reish, blogger and IF teacher, will answer the top Intermittent Fasting questions for you in an engaging, interesting, and colorful presentation.

I’d love to have you join me for a free one hour webinar where I answer ten most common IF questions…

1) What is fasting?

2) Who should fast?

3) What happens during fasting?

4) Do I have different fasting options?

5) How do I lose weight with IF?

6) Can I eat whatever I want?

7) What are the benefits of IF?

8) What do I do when I’m hungry?

9) How do I set myself up for success?

10) Can I do it forever?

Check out this short video where I describe the webinar!

 

 

I’m excited to teach this life-changing material–and I can’t wait to see YOU in the webinar!

 

 

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Links to Learn More About Intermittent Fasting

Sign up for my free Intermittent Fasting webinar, “10 Intermittent Fasting Questions,” a one hour presentation to answer your IF questions!

Sign up for my month-long, step-by-step course (starts the first Monday of each month)

Subscribe to the blog and get free IF start up charts

Join my private FB group where I teach IF!

Subscribe to iTunes

Subscribe to Youtube channel

Get my IF app

The post FREE “10 Intermittent Fasting Questions” Webinar appeared first on Character Ink.

How’s your “back to school” productivity, scheduling, and prioritizing going? Mine is full on crazy with all of our new fall endeavors—but thanks to the many mechanisms and tricks that I learned from three decades of homeschooling and two decades of curriculum writing, I’m still afloat! 😜

I recently did a video on my personal FB profile about “breaking it down”—how to approach overwhelming tasks and take them step by step. I’d like to share it with you to help get your “organizing thoughts” on.

So many times we just need to “break it down” in order to “get it done”!

Blessings on your fall school year—no matter what daunting tasks await you!

Donna 

More Videos on Productivity! 

The post Break It Down…Get It Done appeared first on Character Ink.

Classes are underway for the second semester for both Character Ink Cottage Classes and Donna’s Live Online Writing Classes (yay!). I had so much fun with a couple of students in a book that I haven’t taught from for a while that I thought I would give my readers the lesson and video of the class—AND give you a chance to win a copy of the book I am using! Yep–someone will win a free copy of the spiral-bound, print version of Meaningful Composition 9 II: High School Creative Writing simply by watching the teaching video in this post and commenting below that you watched the whole video–and what you learned or liked about it! 🙂 (Homework!)

Here are the deets:

1) Download and print this document here to follow along with the lesson that goes with this video (watch it with your students!).

2) Watch the video of the class.

3) Comment at the end of the blog post what you learned or what you liked about the video by May 31st.

4) Watch the blog for the winner!

If you like learning about descriptive writing, punctuating double and triple adjectives, dividing paragraphs in a one-scene story, using the best words for the job, and more, you will love today’s video! If you need help in teaching outlining, prewriting skills, and more, this lesson will help you. If you’re just curious about my online teaching, watch this video!

P.S. Don’t forget to comment below to be entered to win the drawing on May 31st!

The post Live Teaching Video & REAL Book Give Away! (Free Lesson Download Included!) appeared first on Character Ink.

I recently had a student miss an important class session in my sequence of teaching the 3 P’s of Persuasive Writing, so I recorded the review for him. When I finished recording it, I thought it would make a good review for parents and teachers who are teaching in these areas (and for those who would like to see what goes on in my advanced writing classes). So….here you go!

Watch the teaching video and follow along with the downloadable portions provided. It really is fun to learn how to take your POSITION, design your POINTS, and gather your PROOFS! 🙂

Click here to download the lesson PDF!

P.S. We are planning next year’s classes. Contact me to learn more or to find out which classes (live and online) will be perfect for your students! 260-433-4365.

The post 3 P’s of Persuasive Writing Review Session Video (With Free Download!) appeared first on Character Ink.

I have the privilege of doing something this semester that I only get to do every once in a while–teach a private or small group of students who have taken many classes with us before how to write a BIG research paper. Most students who start out with us in elementary school of taking CQLA (Character Quality Language Arts) classes follow a protocol similar to this:

1) CQLA A and B for first four years or so (depending on when they begin)

2) CQLA C for two years

3) MC 10 I: High School Essays

4) MC 10 II: Four Research Reports

5) Speech and debate

6) Literature with Joshua (formerly)

7) CLEP English with Joshua (formerly)

Every once in a while we get a student who wants the challenge of going beyond MC 10 II’s research reports and doing the BIG ONE!

• 32-50 paragraphs
• 8-12 sentences per paragraph
• 10-15 total sources
• A parenthetical (MLA Style) citation for each piece of information in the paper
• 10-15 quotes in the paper
• Massive Checklist Challenge for the entire project

It is a one-semester (16 weeks or so) undertaking that is not for the faint of heart. It sounds daunting, but the students who sign up for this special arrangement have already learned all of the pieces incrementally with me in the previous years–many years. And I spread the project out for them weekly over the entire semester, so it truly comes in bite-sized chunks.

I thought I would share our first meeting via video with you (and the chapter that goes with this video–warning: it’s long if you’re downloading/printing!) so that you can see how to approach such a big project.

Click here or on the page below to download this chapter!

Here are some tips if you decide to “try this at home”!

1) Be sure that the student has learned all of the skills that will be used in this endeavor.

Yes, I am teaching these skills again, but it is never a good idea to bring too many new skills together in huge project. The girls have had all of the elements of the research report in previous classes/my previous books. Now we will review those as we get to each skill needed for the BIG ONE! (See my steps for an easier research report here)

2) Watch out for your division of work.

I look at the entire project and the time that we have to complete it and divide up all of the elements. I assured the students that it will be broken down for them–and that they will get bite-sized chunks that are doable. It’s stressful for students to have assignments that are too “loose” (ie. research for four weeks). They need to learn HOW to put all of the steps and elements in place, and it is up to us to divide the work up in manageable pieces.

3) Break the entire paper down into sections and paragraphs with them.

You will notice in the video how much I emphasized breaking the paper down into six, eight, or ten sections with paragraphs beneath those. I do this in all of my books–teaching students to see each “section” as its own mini report as opposed to looking at the entire thirty-two paragraphs and wondering where to start.

4) Teach a simplified research method.

Years ago, in an attempt to simplify a task that was very challenging for me in high school, I came up with the “Overview Source Method” and the “Color-Coding Method” for research report writing. I love teaching this to students as I am giving them something that they can take into college and beyond. (Read my snow day/research catch up story from my high school days here)

(I still use it in book writing and blog writing!) I am giving them something that I truly wish I had, had when I was their age. It works amazingly well! (Here’s my Overview Source Method)

5) Keep close tabs on their progress.

Don’t make assumptions about where you think they are–or that they are where you think they should be! This is big, hard stuff. They need our guidance every step of the way. We can see a problem that they might overlook and fix it for them before it gets out of control or they get too far down in the process and have to go back and redo weeks of work.

I hope you will print off the free download lesson and follow along as I introduce this challenging task to a couple of awesome students!

(Oh, and text or call me if you want to put in your request for a certain live, online Meaningful Composition class for next year! And see why MC books work here!)

Check out how I teach Opening and Closing Paragraphs for Research Reports!

P.S. What are your biggest challenges in teaching research writing? How can I help you?

The post BIG Research Paper Introduction (Video and Download!) appeared first on Character Ink.

Welcome to another Wondering Wednesday A/V. Today’s episode is a V—video!

In this video, I show parents how to use our new “Consequence Pies” ebook/download (one of last month’s freebies!). However, if you do not have the Consequence Pies product, stay with me!

The methodology in this download (available here at our store) can be used with or without the product, and I explain that protocol in this video! (Plus, you could make your own pies easily after watching the video.)

The idea behind the Consequence Pies is to take control of negative routine behaviors (as opposed to one of the Four D’s—check out that product here) that are developing or that have developed by putting the outcome back in your child’s hands—while giving grace and “chances” as needed.

Watch the first part closely—there are things that must be done on the parents’ part before using this approach: training, rewarding, follow through, and more. But once all of that is done, it is time for the child to decide “yes, I am going to do my homework every day before computer time” or “yes, I am going to take out the trash like I am supposed to every day”—or suffer consequences (that he chooses ahead of time) for not following through on that routine behavior that I have been taught.

Consequence Pies can be used to help your children learn to develop character in routine behaviors in the areas of responsibility, thoroughness, diligence, prioritizing, resourcefulness, cleanliness, organization, follow through, and more. They make character training black and white (as opposed to the gray method of “I told you no tv until your extra reading is done” or “Why do you always forget to take the trash down?”).

Furthermore,this protocol puts the choice to follow through on the positive behavior (or not to follow through) back onto the child. He marks the pie pieces if he decides not to comply. No questions. No grayness. Lastly, it offers grace and “chances” as the child is learning the behavior.
 

Watch this video on YouTube

Subscribe to us on YouTube!

The post Video: Using The Consequence Pies appeared first on Character Ink.

 
Five Tips for Avoiding the Terrible Two’s!

(1) Discern between wants and needs prior to the twenty-four month mark

(2) Mean what you say (“Don’t say no unless you’ll go”)

(3) Don’t sweat the small stuff—discerning between truly bad behaviors (behavior absolutes) and childishness

(4) Provide consistency

(5) Tell, don’t ask (unless it’s okay if the child disobeys or doesn’t listen).

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The post [Video] Five Tips for Avoiding The Terrible Twos appeared first on Character Ink.

Writing ideas. Writing prompts. Writing suggestions.

These are the things that cause children who do not know *how* to write to hate writing.

And it is often what we do to kids in an effort to get the writing. But they do not work for these kinds of kids.

So what works?

Very specific, detailed writing instruction! (See Cathy Duffy’s review of MC here…)

One of the tools that we use in grades two through six or so is Joshua’s amazing Writing Boxes.

Check out the video of me teaching from our new ones that will be out in our Write On, Belle and Beast books at the end of February!

Books that contain Writing Boxes:

Write On, Mowgli — Level I

Write On, Mowgli — Level II

Jungle Book Writing Boxes

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The post Writing Boxes: Beauty & the Beast [Video] appeared first on Character Ink.