361. The Recipe for Success - Christina Sinclair: Salty Sam's Fun Blog for Children

January 14th, 2022

Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children

Number 361

The Recipe for Success

Hello Everyone

So this blog post follows on from last week…

Once you have decided on what goals you want to achieve, made a plan on how to get them, you have to start working on your plan.

lNGREDlENT ONE – think before you leap

When a lot of people decide to do something, they rush in, try it and fail.

They then decide it was a bad idea because it did not work and give up.

Or worse still, they think it will be too difficult to achieve from the start, so they just give up before even trying.

This is not the way to tackle a new project.

lNGREDlENT TWO – informed decisions

The first thing to do when you want to try something new, is to learn about it first.

This is called research.

You cannot make an informed decision without information.

Research, then think and sleep on it, and then move forward.

lNGREDlENT THREE – preparation

Go in slowly. Join a class and let a teacher who has been trained to teach something properly and has lots of experience help you.

Don’t commit too much time, energy or money at first. Try things out in a small way. See how you go.

Go in slowly, find out how it is done and speed up when you know more about what you are doing.

Sometimes, the slower you start, the quicker you finish.

You wouldn’t take a learner driver out on the motorway for their first lesson.

lf you have trouble passing exams – you can’t cope with the paper and run out of time, then learn exam technique first and think about speeding up later – one step at a time!

lNGREDlENT FOUR – lifelong learning

ln order to be successful in school, work, any business you start, hobbies you take up and life in general, the more you learn, the more you can apply what you have learnt to make things easier for yourself.

We now live in the 21^st century – life has never been so fast and changes have never come at us so quickly in the whole of human history.

There are also more opportunities for people too: lots of things to experience and lots of things to see and know about.

lt is a characteristic of our time that we have to commit to life-long learning in order to keep up with everything – especially technology.

You might think that it is a terrible thought that when you leave school you will never really leave school – but the good news is that when you are a grown-up you can choose what it is you want to learn.

So if you love science but not poetry, you can choose to learn more about science.

lf you love writing, on the other hand, and want to be a journalist, nobody is going to force you to keep learning chemistry forever.

lNGREDlENT FlVE – learn from your mistakes

The next important thing to know, is that when you try to do things, they may sometimes go wrong – but this is the natural pattern of things. lt doesn’t mean that you are a total idiot.

What you must do, is to learn from your mistakes, and then do things differently next time.

You don’t give up, you self-correct and keep going and try again.

lNGREDlENT SlX – courage is a muscle that needs to be exercised

And sometimes you must have enormous courage to keep going or try new things.

This isn’t easy for anyone of any age.

Sometimes, you have to be brave to try new things but after you have faced your fears, you can be very proud of yourself.

l don’t mean doing things like running across the road with your eyes shut.

That is not brave, that is stupid.

Let me explain.

Have you ever had to earn a poem off by heart and recite it in front of the class for example?

Has your teacher ever asked you to prepare a presentation, or talk about what you did during the summer holidays?

You might be really nervous standing up in front of an audience. But after you finished, you felt really relieved and pleased that you made a success of your task.

They say that at the other side of fear lies elation (great happiness).

Acting courageously can develop courage.

And the more you do things you find difficult, the more they become easy, everyday things. This is how we grow as people.

The next time you have a difficult feat to tackle, think back to a time when you had something difficult to do and successfully achieved it and reassure yourself that you can do it again.

Some people say that the feeling of fear and the feeling of excitement in your body is the same feeling. So you can redefine the feeling of fear to yourself as actually being excitement.

Even adults have to do this sometimes.

lNGREDlENT SEVEN – mental rehearsal

lf you have something difficult to do, like give a talk in front of your class, for example, think about exactly what you are going to do before you do it.

Prepare well and imagine what will happen in your head over and over again. lmagine how you will make a success of it. This is called ‘mental rehearsal’.

When you go to give your speech, it will not seem so strange to you because you will have already experienced it before – in your head.

lNGREDlENT ElGHT – feedback

Then after you have finished giving a talk in front of your class – after you calm down and congratulate yourself on having faced a daunting task and completed it, think about what went well and what you did that could be improved upon next time – this is how we grow and improve.

lNGREDlENT NlNE – your social group

Another of the important ways to be successful, is to be with people who are successful.

You might think that this is a bit difficult when you don’t choose who is in your class with you or the area that you grow up in.

But you can choose to not hang out with kids who are bullies, who behave badly and who don’t care about their school work. lf you hang out with badly-behaved people, they start having a bad influence on you. They might even get you into serious trouble one day. This is the road to ruin and not success.

Follow your own heart and not the crowd.

lf the people around you behave well and have good values, it is easier for you to be the same.

Then you can concentrate on doing useful things like improving your sports skills and enjoying interesting hobbies. lf you are good at maths and your friend is better at English, you can help each other and give each other encouragement.

Giving support and getting support is enormously helpful.

lNGREDlENT TEN – fresh growth

Learning new things is interesting. You never know what you could be really good at until you try it out.

Scientists have found that you can delay the brain aging by constantly learning new things.

lf you want to keep yourself sparky after you have retired from your job you need to take up new interests like learning a new language or how to juggle, or playing table tennis or visiting new places and learning about their history.

lt was thought in the past that brains got old and could not learn new things.

We now know that this is not true. They can go on learning forever!

You just have to decide that you will keep living an interesting life.

lf you like my blog, please support it by telling all your friends and followers about it.

Thank you!

And see you again next Fun Friday!

Love and kisses

Salty Sam

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www.christina-sinclair.com

Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week

Bill: Two men go walking in the forest. And a grizzly bear comes towards them.

Bob: Oh, no!

Bill: So one man says to the other, “Quick! Run!”

The other man says, “Are you mad? You can’t outrun a grizzly!”

And the first man says, “l know that! l just have to outrun you!”

Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.

Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com

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Picture Gallery

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desk THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK

This week, we have an interesting quiz for you to think about.

When you plant a garden, you are much more likely to have success if you follow this advice – ‘right plant in the right place’.

So which group of plants would you plant in each soil type?

Chalk

Clay

Sandy

ONE

Lupin, carnation, lavender, gladiolus, cranesbill

TWO

clematis, heather, buddleia, catmint, day lily

THREE

campanula, phlox, dahlia, rudbeckia, delphinium

Rudbeckia

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TO ADVERTISE ON THIS BLOG

PLEASE CONTACT:

christina.sinclair.ads@aol.co.uk

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Quick Quiz

Do you like to play sports?

Can you un-muddle these words to find some cool sports and activities?

thatilecs
lyiccng
mginsmiw
nidcang
cebaris
yoag
smcatginsy

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lt’s the Weekend!

HOW TO MAKE A NOTEBOOK COVER

You will need to measure your notebook and only cut the pieces of plastic canvas to size after you have checked that the pattern you intend to use will fit onto the piece. If it won’t, cut the piece bigger than you need it to be. You might want to start sewing onto a sheet of plastic to make sure, before you cut any pieces out.

Canvas work stitches almost always fit into a pattern of odd-numbered holes.

If your pattern doesn’t quite fit the way you want it to, you can add a border of any size using tent stitches or cross stitches.

This project really gives you the opportunity to become your own designer.

You may need to buy two sheets of canvas, if you have quite a large note book to cover – or even three.

You will need a sheet or sheets of 7 mesh 10.5 by 13.5 inches/26.7 by 34.3cm

But you may want to start with a smaller book just to get the feel of a project like this on a smaller item which is easier to handle.

The notepad in the photograph is 10cm by 12cm.

The canvas cut to cover it is as follows:-

Front cover (double-sided) and back cover

46 holes by 29 holes – 3 panels

The panel to hold the notepad in place sewn onto the back panel

29 holes by 23 holes – 1 panel

The panel at the top to make a hinge (make sure your hinge is wide enough to span the spine or spiral of your book)

29 holes by 4 holes – 1 panel

If you buy a ball of rainbow yarn you will get several colours within that ball to use.

All the lengths of yarn you use will be the same thickness and texture and the colours will match well together.

There will be a cross-over place where the dye colour changes. You can use this extra colour in your design or cut it out as you choose, but if the colour change does not extend for a very long way down the length of the yarn it will probably disappear when you change colours anyway – because you need a little bit of yarn to sit in your needle at one end and be used up in a knot or a join on length the other.

There may also be patches of colour that have accidentally soaked into the wrong place – don’t worry about this. It is just the character of the yarn you are using.

TO MAKE UP

Cover the two front panels with embroidery – the cover in the photograph has large crosses made with colours from one ball of rainbow yarn and there is a border made with tiny crosses worked in white metallic yarn – the addition of the white really makes the other colours pop
Sew the two covers together back to back
Sew around the back cover incorporating a panel at the bottom to hold the back cover of the notepad
Sew the front to the front of the hinge and the back to the back of the hinge and then sew along the side edges of the hinge to neaten

TIP

If you keep sewing in the same direction as you work a line of stitches, the back of your work will be as neat as the front.