Marty's Adventures

It's been almost a year since I last posted and since then several things have happened in my life pertaining to book publishing.  Below is the first event...

Marty's Counting Adventure

Book 3 in Marty's Adventure Series

Last fall (2019) my third and final book in my Marty's Adventure series was published!
Both my illustrator, Cynthia Stahl and I are thrilled to finally have our book out there and in the hands of our little readers.

In October of that year, I traveled to Swift Current, Saskatchewan to present at Chinook Teacher's Associations annual convention where I also participated in a book signing.

It was wonderful to have this trip with Tirzah from Baker who had a HB Book Centre book exhibit, Elaine from Green Acres, her assistant and Serena from Fairholme who presented with me!
Besides doing the convention, we also visited friends at Hodgeville Colony and hiked at Grasslands National Park.  While waiting for Tirzah and Elaine to return from the long hike, Serena and I created and composed while warming up in our van after our shorter trek.

 Grasslands National Park

Serena's Sketch

Hemmed in by wooden rail enclosure:

Parched prairie grasses wave rigidly in frigid wind,

Smooth pebbles in various earthen hues roll underfoot,
Tufted vegetation clings staunchly to frozen blossoms,
Rounded and angular peaks reach toward cloudy skies,
Dark dry gullies descend from heights,
Drifts of discoloured snow caught in crags and crevices. 

Saskatchewan’s grasslands --

Magnificent sustenance-affording habitat

For countless creatures from prairie dog to bison,

Picturesque, life-giving environment!

           

Book signing at Chinook Teacher's Association Convention

           Elma Maendel

October 2019

Marty's Adventure Series

 

For more information, please contact me via this post or visit HB Book Centre at www.hbbookcentre.com for more books written by Hutterite authors.

Ish Art

One of the first art projects of this school year began with the reading of Ish by Peter H Reynolds.  Amazon writes that"A creative spirit learns that thinking "ish-ly" is far more wonderful than "getting it right" in this book. " 

My students were delighted with this concept and we find the suffix "ish" creeping into almost every subject area now.  

We created "ish" paintings by crumpling up 4" x 5" rectangles into balls and dabbing liquid water colours all over it.  We flattened them out and recrumpled them, then repeated this with two other colours.  We discovered some interesting ishly shapes and colour combination, some were sping-ish, others Christmas-ish and a whole bunch of other ish ones!

Grandparents Day Cards

During the next art class, my grades 6 - 8 class transformed their paintings into "ish" Grandparents Day cards.  I know that at least one gradma was "ishfully" pleased with the cards she received.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Support Staff Appreciation Cards

My grades 1 & 2 students designed thank you cards to present to our EA for all he hard work at our Support Staff Appreciation party.









 

  Christmas Cards

 Finally, just before Christmas, my grades 3 - 5 class turned their ish paintings into Christmas cards for parents, grandparents and other family members and friends.

I'm sure all who received these cards were absolutely, ishfully delighted with them.

Writing and Publishing Beginnings

Hi Elma, I'm trying to reconstruct the Young Cooperators Club page on Facebook since it mysteriously disappeared several months ago. Elaine Shein and I thought we should start up another one, and since the interest is there with members, we did! Here is the new Facebook page if you would like to rejoin. We'd love to see you there!

I read the message from Carol MacKay over a second time. Young Cooperators (YC) Club sounded familiar to me, but who was Carol and how did she get my contact information?  YC Club took me back many years…

The Western Producer

My dad had a subscription to the Western Producer, a weekly farm paper, when I was growing up. Since he was responsible for raising our colony’s poultry and water fowl, he was interested in most of the farm news.   My sisters and I usually just paged through each new edition, not really getting much involved in the agricultural articles. 

One day however, things changed for my sister Linda and me.  We were both avid readers and also enjoyed writing, so when we discovered the YC pages, we felt this might be where we could have our ramblings published! We sent a letter to Sister Anne, the YC editor and soon received a letter welcoming us to send in our contributions.  Both of us submitted stories, poems and also a bit of art work and were as excited as young children watching a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis when we received YC crests for our first publications and then certificates and 5^th contribution stamps.  Feedback given to us by fellow YCs, (leaders or poet laureates) was another aspect that added to our enthusiasm.  For months, we anxiously waited for each weekly paper to see if our contributions had been published.

A dozen or more years later, I enrolled in Brandon University’s Bachelor of Education program.  Towards the end of the four-year program, I took a course on children’s literature.  It was here we were assigned to write a children’s book.  Immediately, I knew I wanted mine to be published!  I found an illustrator who did a fabulous job adding pictures to my words.  Although I sent query letters to numerous publishers, it took ten years for me to find the right one, or more accurately, for the right publisher to find my manuscript and me!  I’ve since published a second book and have a third one ready to be published.  Since I belong to a writers’ group, I’m always writing something, so I have a few more stories in the back burner that I hope will be published one day.

Publishing

I teach kindergarten to grade eight at Elm River Colony where I grew up and still live; therefore, when I started planning my first book, I knew I wanted it to serve three purposes:

1)    Provide my Hutterite students with a book where they could connect and identify with the characters.

2)    Offer non-Hutterite children a glimpse into my unique culture.

3)    Create something I could use in my teaching to introduce different concepts.

The main characters in my books are an inquisitive mouse named Marty and his friend Lizzie, a Hutterite girl.  The text is written in rhyme and is interspersed with words in the Hutterite dialect.  Cynthia Stahl from Odanah Colony, my illustrator, captures just the right balance of whimsy and Hutterite culture.  In the first book, Marty learns about shapes, in the second one it is colours and in the third one, he’ll learn to count.

Since our YC days, my sister Linda (Lucky Lynn) has had several books published: Linda’s glücklicher Tag, a picture book written in German and Hutterite Diaries, a collection of short stories about Hutterite life.  She’s also written articles for Herald Leader Press, Winnipeg Free Press and Manitoba Cooperator.  My books and also Linda’s are available at hbbookcentre.com.

Little did we know when we wrote our introductory letters to Sister Ann that our contributions to the YC pages would be just the beginning of our writing careers.

Thanks Carol, fellow YC contributor, for inviting me to join YC on Facebook.  Although I never met any of the YC members in person, it’s wonderful to connect and discover the writing journeys different members are taking – journeys that found their beginnings in the YC pages of The Western Producer.

Tangrams

The grade math curriculum suggests using Tangrams and picture books when teaching 2-D shapes. (See below)

I've used these before, but this year I changed several of my resources and had a much more successful lesson.

Books

I used the books Grandfather Tang's Story and  Three Pigs, One Wolf, and Seven Magic Shapes

Pictures

I took close-up pictures of the templates used in each book, which I displayed on my SMART board.

Magnetic Tangrams

I have a set of large foam tangrams that I use to demonstrate with.  Before starting my lesson this time around, I hot-glued magnets to the back of each piece.  Now I can use them on my whiteboard as I demonstrate, which makes the demonstration visible for all students.













Both of these visuals added success to my lesson.  In the past, my students had to refer to tiny 3 cm square pictures, now the large image on the SMART board combined with my step-by-step demonstration on the whiteboard, enabled all of my students to build the shapes successfully!

Do you have other Tangram books or resources that you've found successful?