WISP What I Offer
K - 3: read aloud of the book with some actual sugar making items. 4 - 8: Slide show presentation of making maple products or of the editing process. Years of parenting, church youth work, 4-H leadership and her experiences as an Educational Assistant has rewarded Kim Renton with the privilege of encouraging children to believe in themselves and their abilities. She has always found it easy to cultivate self-confidence in others but struggled to grow it in herself. A few years ago, a teacher at her school was working on a mindset activity with their students about setting realistic goals, organizing the steps to achieve them, adjusting them if the outcome wasn’t being met, and learning to change negative ideas into positive ones. She joined the activity to support the students but ended up taking its lesson to heart. She’d always loved to write, but her lack of self-confidence had prevented her from taking it seriously. For instance, she’d written a story about making maple syrup that was based on her family’s fifth-generation maple syrup camp. She’d used it when preschool children visited on field trips, but some early negative feedback had led her to file the story away for 20 years. But the mindfulness activity encouraged her to edit and polish the story, then research publishers and gather the confidence to submit it to one. Her goal was met and surpassed when Chocolate River Publishing published What-Cha Doing? just as the sap began to flow for the 2019 maple syrup season. She is thrilled with how Tamara Thibaux-Heikalo’s beautiful illustrations and creative suggestions have brought her story to life.