Phases of Learning-TJed

Through the different research I have done, it seems like the TJed (Thomas Jefferson Education) will be the best fit for my family.  My husband and I have always been passionate about how much you can learn from reading the classics.  Since TJed is centered around this idea, it just seems like it will work for us.  The problem is that I don't have any idea how to implement it!

In one of my previous posts, I gave a little review on the Thomas Jefferson Education.  It gave a good overview, but nothing concrete.  I was a bit discouraged that it didn't have more information in it.  I joined the TJed group on Facebook to learn more, and discovered that there was a book that went further in depth.  I finally decided to buy The Phases of Learning knowing that I would probably want to reread it quite a few times.  I settled on the Kindle edition so that I could read it on my tablet in bed.

Right now I am about 20 percent through with the book, and I feel even more clueless than when I started!  I am trying to locate families in Ohio that use this approach, so that I can see firsthand how they do it in their families.  I am more of a visual learner, so this would help me.

Anyway, there are a lot of things discussed that I wasn't expecting.  I didn't expect to be told to do a purge every 6 months.  It makes sense, but it seems odd to be in this book.  I started it today.  I can't do much because of the contractions happening, but I had my son help me go through his toys.  I do feel better about the majority of his toys going elsewhere.  It will help me so much!  I can see how this can be an important step.

I also wasn't expecting to be told to "just say no".  They encourage mothers to make a list every six months of everything they do.  Then cross half of it off.  This helps them not be so frustrated.  Right now I am not doing much, so it doesn't apply to me.  I can see how it can apply to many mothers out there.

In fact, I started reading a second book today called The Burnout Cure.  It was a book that I bought a few months ago, but never started to read.  It is geared towards LDS women, but can be applied to any religion.  It is supposed to help women understand how to avoid the burnout we all experience, and therefore help us with depression/anxiety issues.  Since I suffer with depression, I wanted to read the book.  As it turns out, it will fit in perfectly with what I read with the Phases of Learning.  She basically said that same thing in the introduction.  We need to start saying no.

I hope that the two books will fit well together.  If they don't, that is ok too.  I often have multiple books going at a time.  In any case, I hope the further I read into the Phases of Learning will bring more clarity to me.  I want TJed to work, but I don't want to be frustrated.  If I think it will be frustrating, I will just move to a different approach.

If you apply TJed philosophy in your homeschool, feel free to contact me!  I would love any insight!

New Beginning

The past few months have been quite difficult for us.  Preschool just didn't stand a chance against hyperemesis.  TV has become a constant in our house, and that has been all my son has done for months.  I have felt incredibly guilty not being able to do the things I wish I could with him to begin his education.  I have watched his behavior drastically change from the amounts of TV, and I was tired of all the tantrums that have resulted from it.  Everything started to be a struggle, so I wanted a change.

This past week the hyperemesis has started to lighten up (in exchange for constant contractions), so I decided to start reading to him.  I ordered a copy of Charlotte's Web off of Amazon to read to him.  I didn't have any idea how it would go over with him, but I needed to try.  It turned out much better than expected!
The first day we read Charlotte's Web, we ended up reading 55 pages, and then he brought armfuls of other books for me to read to him!

I was quite surprised at his selection of books that he wanted read to him.  Many of them had pigs in them.  One even went into detail about what a runt is.  It wasn't a fluke because I watched him scan his pile to pick out the precise books he wanted read.  It's nice to know that a 3 year old can still follow along with a chapter book.

 My son sure did surprise me.  He loves reading "Charlotte's Spider Web Book".  Every few paragraphs he would steal the book from me to read the letters at the top of the page, and then tell me the page number we were on.

Today is the second day I have limited TV.  Yesterday he didn't watch anything.  Today I am letting him watch Happy Feet.  His behavior has greatly improved, but it does need to be tested.  The real test will come when we take him to a store.

Even though he is allowed to watch a movie, reading has been his priority.  We read a few pages in Charlotte's Web, and then he took a laundry basket to his room.  He then pushed this huge basket of books down the hall for today's reading.  He fully expects Mommy to read them all to him today.

Today has been a good day.  It started by going through his toys to pick out what we can give to other kids.  I expected a lot of push back from him.  Instead he enjoyed helping!  I want to get him down to things like legos, trains, blocks, and a few cars.  Everything else I want gone.  It just takes too much space, and requires too much cleaning.

Hopefully I can continue this to a certain extent.

I Have A Hypothesis!

Well, my desire to begin homeschooling efforts has completely failed.  Not for lack of desire, but for health reasons (If interested you can read more here under the tag hyperemesis).  I finally came to terms that I can only do what I can do.  My son is still young (3), so I know that he doesn't need formal teaching.  I just wanted to start heading in that direction.

It just makes me sad because he is watching a lot more television that I would like.  At least he finds educational shows.  He really likes documentaries!  I am amazed at the stuff he can find himself on Roku.

A lot of his education right now is surrounded by mommy's medical visits.  He has learned a lot from those.  My doctors are great because they include him in the appointments.  He loves being able to stand on a chair, squirt goo on Mommy's belly, and then use the doppler to find baby sister's heartbeat.  He really gets spoiled by my OB.  (If you are in the Dayton area, Miami Valley Women's Health is highly recommended!)

Anyway, the whole point of this story was to record a fun conversation my husband and I had with our son yesterday before I forget.  For a little background, my son loves dinosaurs and trains.  Therefore, his favorite show is Dinosaur Train.  Buddy the T-Rex always has a hypothesis he tries out.  Here it goes:

Son:  "I have a hypothesis (pronounced hypoxis)!  It's a great idea you can test!"
Dad:  "What's your hypothesis?"
Son:  "That Mommy likes flowers and cake!"  (they had tested this out on Saturday by bringing me flowers and cake)
Dad:  "We already tested that hypothesis.  How about a new hypothesis?"
Son:  "Ummmmm.....I know!  Stegasaurus!"
Dad"  What about Stegasaurus?  What can we test?"
Son:  "I have a hypothesis that they have 17 plates!"
Dad:  "Ok, how do we test that?  I don't know where to find a Stegasaurus."
Son:  "At the Zoo!  We can count the plates at the Zoo!"

Yes, we do in fact have Stegasaurus at the Columbus Zoo until November 2, 2014.  Looks like we will be making a trip there this weekend to count the plates.  I have no idea where he comes up with these things, but I was so proud!

So, I guess even though he spends practically all day every day watching TV at least I know he is learning from it!

This weeks adventures.

Homeschooling has not begun like I expected.  Does it ever?  We spread out Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear for 2 weeks.  Little man didn't mind because he liked the book.  Here are some pictures from our efforts.

This picture shows Isaac working on basic writing skills.  Writing left to right, and following the line.  This wasn't his favorite activity.  His favorite activity was counting.  

Little man wanted Mommy to make snow so he could make a Snowlof (Olaf).  Obviously I can't do that, so I did the next best thing.  I microwaved a bar of soap, and then had him paint it.  

The brown are the arms and legs.  The purple is Anna.  The blue is Elsa.  

This past week was my birthday, and my husband surprised us with a trip up to Canada to visit family.

We went to Marineland.  Little man has taken a particular interest in killer whales, so even though it was expensive we really wanted to do it.

They had a little nursery for beluga whales.  We loved seeing the nursing whale.  It helped little man understand a bit more about how mommy is going to feed baby.  

Marineland gives kids lots of opportunities to feed the animals.  We fed bears, deer, fish, bison, and could have fed the beluga whales.  

 The area surrounding Niagara Falls, in Ontario, is rich with historic teaching opportunities.  We wanted to make sure Little Man got to see the locks.  He got to watch them load cargo onto the boats, and then see the bridge raise to let the boat go by.  Later on he watched the boat travel across Lake Erie.   

 No trip is complete without a visit to Niagara Falls.  His favorite part about the visit was watching the Maid of the Mist.

I am lucky to have such a good little boy.  My hyperemesis is back in full swing.  I have spent most of the past week in bed.  Luckily my son just likes to bring me books to read to him.  I just wish I could do more.  Luckily, he won't remember this part.  I keep reminding myself that he doesn't need to be learning anything in particular right now.  As long as he is playing he can learn.  

A Thomas Jefferson Education

As part of my research phase to find the right fit for my family, I checked A Thomas Jefferson Education out of the library.  This book is behind the TJed movement.  It focuses on using the classics to educate your children, and yourself, just like Thomas Jefferson did.  

I was very pleased with how this book was written.  It was very positive, and easy to read.  It is a book that I will probably read many times.  It is a book that I recommend everyone read because we all can learn from it.  Reading/learning from the classics really resonates with my husband and I.  We will end up implementing a lot of the concepts in our lifestyle.   

There wasn't a lot of guidance in how someone should approach implementing the ideas, but that is where the website and discussion boards become useful.  There are plenty of forums to help you with ideas, and lots of book lists.  I am a little unsure of how the math would be taught, but I guess that will come as we go.  

Here are a few of the quotes that I really liked from the book:

"Teaching, not education, should be our focus because great teaching inspires students to educate themselves." -Oliver DeMille

I believe this quote to be quite powerful.  I have had some great inspiring teachers (oddly enough they were literature teachers) that have left a lasting impression with me.  These teachers are the ones that kindled my love of learning.  

"If the purpose is to train leaders, it's important not to force the young person through their learning experiences.  Force in learning kills the spirit, dampens the passion and destroys the zest and life learning.  Force trains followers, not leaders."  -Oliver DeMille

I believe that everyone has had an experience where they are forced to learn something.  It doesn't foster a love of learning, and it kills it.  There are other avenues to try if something doesn't work.  One should never be forced to learn something.  Granter, there are times when things have to be learned, but it should never be forced.  

"Question, probe, ponder, think, discuss, write, apply."  -Oliver DeMille 

A lot of the TJed philosophy deals with the idea of mentoring.  This is what this last quote refers to.  I like the way the process here is just laid out.  

"To achieve truly excellent education, keep it simple:  Read, Write, do Projects and Discuss."  -Oliver DeMille

I like this quote because it makes me remember that education does not need to be complicated.  I think people think that it needs to be a complicated curriculum in order to educate a child.  Yet that just isn't the case.  There are many different approaches to gaining an education.  This philosophy will help to create leaders and thinkers.  It's also important to remember that learning never ceases.  Just because you are done with school doesn't mean you are done learning.  

Music ideas

I have seen quite a few posts in the past few weeks on the homeschooling boards with questions about what to do for music.  I wanted to share a little of what I have been using.  Granted, my son is 3, so it may be too young for your children. However, it does work for some older children as well.

Most parents know the author Sandra Boynton from her wonderful board books.  What most parents don't know is that she also composes songs.  Some of these songs even go along with her books!  She publishes these songs in a book with great illustrations.  It comes with a CD with the songs sung by different celebrities.   What I like the best is that some of the CD's have a karaoke version after the regular version of the songs. This gives the kids to sing the songs themselves.   There is sheet music in the back of the book for parents, or kids, to play the songs.  Here are the books that I own, but there are more.

My son likes to sit on my lap while we go through the cd/songs page by page.  Sometimes he will get out some pans and spoons to drum along with it.  Other times he will play his harmonica to the music.  Then of coarse there is always lots of singing!

 There is also this book by Ben Kingsley.  The book goes through different instruments, some music history, and brief overview of a variety of composers.  It comes with a CD as well, but we haven't listened to it yet.  It is above where my son is at, so we are holding off on this.

I know it's not much, but I thought I would put this out there for those of you who are searching for where to start with your kids.  This is easy, and non threatening.  I also encourage you to look into community centers to see what is offered.  I know that there is a lot offered here in Columbus, Ohio.  Music doesn't have to be too involved at first.

The First Week

I had originally planned to begin preschool with my son last Wednesday since that was the day that all of his friends were starting school.  We sort of started on Tuesday because he kept begging for school to start.  I have learned a lot in this first week.

The first that I learned is that Isaac knows a lot more than I could even fathom!  That first day I made a concentrated effort to read to him.  He didn't want the reading to stop!  In any case, through this reading binge I found out how much he knows about dinosaurs.  We had a discussion about why dinosaurs are not lizards, and he listed off all the different kinds of dinosaurs (correctly) shown in the book.

What surprised me the most was when he stopped me mid-sentence to say, "That's a triceratops.  It's a triceratops because it has three horns."  I am assuming that I can thank Dinosaur Train for that one.  This is the book that he loves.  There isn't a picture of the book, so here is a picture for you.  It is an older book, but it is a good one.

Feel free to check out my Goodreads profile for more books here.  

I will admit that this week has consisted of a lot of TV watching.  The last few days have been difficult in my pregnancy, so it's what I have to resort to.  However, my son has decided that he loves the Leap Frog movies on Netflix.  He has been watching that or Magic School Bus this week.  He seems to be learning from it.  He has always been good at differentiating what letter is which, but didn't know the sounds very well.  

Up until this morning I didn't know he knew the corresponding sounds at all.  Last night I had finally got around to laminating the worksheets for this week.  These are two examples.  Isaac was able to get a majority of them correctly.  Didn't expect him to do that well at all!  

These worksheets go to Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear and can be found here.

Before Five in a Row has been interesting.  This week was Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear.  It is a cute book.  I think the most important thing my son has learned from the book was how important it is to have a clean room (I stressed that while looking at the pictures).  The first day that we read the book, we lasted 20 minutes.  I didn't have any worksheets for him yet, so that was all that we did.  Now that we have our worksheets we can last a few hours.

Today I got the water color paints out.  My son is a bit different.  He HATES getting his hands dirty (unless it is mud).  Regular paints he has always detested, and refused to do anything with them.  However, he loved his water color paints!  He painted for about an hour, and still wants to paint more this afternoon.

 This weekend we went to the Ohio Historical Society.  We had never been there, but they were having a food truck festival there.  With the festival (which only cost $6 for parking) came free admission to both the museum, and the historical village.  I wasn't doing well pregnancy wise, so we didn't explore the village much.  My son seemed to enjoy the museum.  He found a trolley to play on, and he loved the skeleton of the Mastodon.

I have learned that my son is capable of learning from me.  Up until this point, if I asked him a question he wouldn't answer me.  Now I know that he is willing to answer me in the right conditions.  He much prefers reading while sitting on my lap, and activities while sitting at the table.

I have also learned that I need to find a way to fill our days better.  I don't want television to be the filler, but that's what it is.  If anyone has any ideas for easy, unsupervised activities for a 3 year old please let me know!  I just can't handle much with this pregnancy.

Something I want to work on is our eating.  I need to find a way to eat healthy.  That is the difficult part.  I would just stick something in the crockpot, but the smell would just make me sick all day.  Lately, Isaac's lunch is fruit, crackers, cheese, and lots of snacks.  No smell ;).  I really want to start doing little cooking lessons with him, but it just isn't possible at this point.  Perhaps in another 4 months.  

The Brainy Bunch

                In June, The Brainy Bunch was released.  It is about a large homeschooling family that was able to get their kids in college by age 12.  I expected the book to be similar to the Tiger Mother, but it wasn't. They seemed fairly laid back. 

                There are parts that I could do without.  For instance, the family seems extremely religious.  I understand that most homeschooling families are, but that isn't the perspective I am interested in for my family.  One part really irritated me because there was a few pages of talking about how they couldn't understand how people can have small families.  How if you have a small family you could be preventing the next Mozart or Einstein from being born.  I took this hard because they didn't acknowledge health reasons as being OK for small families.  They just were down on people deciding not to have more children.  Since I am one of the women that cannot have more children because it would be dangerous, I took this hard. 

                There were a lot of parts that would be great for families that send their children to public school as well.  Reading the book got my wheels turning.  It was able to give me a new perspective on how to teach my child.  They give a lot of examples on how you can “after-school” your children.  I think this book will help any parent become more motivated when it comes to being personally involved in their child’s education.

                Another aspect that I really liked was that every few chapters there were a few pages written by one of the children.  These were written at different ages, so the quality of the writing varies.  It was nice to see how each child views their education, and how it impacted their life.

                Towards the end of the book they would give examples of their homeschooling approach (unschooling for the most part).  I have had a hard time wrapping my head around how this approach could possibly work.  They gave a fantastic idea for a science experiment that could have come up in an everyday conversation.  They suggested asking your child to find out what the city adds to our water.  Then you can take a bottle of water, and put a few drops onto a slide.  You also add a few drops of tap water onto another slide.  Then you examine the two slides, and go from there.  I would never have thought of doing something like this, but it seems so fun!  I guess you just get better at finding ideas as you go. 

                Overall, this was a good book to read.  It kept my attention fairly well.  It offered a plethora of ideas for families to try.  In the back there is a helpful section where they list their different curriculum and gave examples of their transcripts.  All very handy for new homeschooling families like mine. 

               

                

Finding Learning Opportunities

Lately I have felt pretty deflated.  This pregnancy has been extremely rough, and it has resulted in my son watching entirely too much television.  Before I started getting sick I was working with him on his letters, colors, and numbers.  Once the sickness began, that all ended.  I have felt that everything he learned has slowly slipped away, and I will have to start all over again.

I am not sure if planning out how I am going to implement Before Five In A Row has changed my way of thinking, but this week was a bit different.  The week started with a trip to the library because I had a book I needed to pick up.  I let my son pick a bunch of books out (even though the ones he picked I wasn't thrilled with).  Two of the books he picked were Elmer and the Whales and Whoosh and Chug.

Elmer and the Whales may have been one I picked out, but I can't remember.  My son is convinced that I am having a baby whale, so we are trying to convince him otherwise.  This book didn't have a particularly exciting story, but it did allow us to work on his counting.  The art work has multiples of animals on each page.  We would spend the time counting all the different animals (which also involved finding them).  He really enjoyed it.

Whoosh and Chug was not a book that I wanted to read.  It was one of many train books that have entered this house.  It ended up being quite fun to read, and it has a lot of sight words in it.  Some of the words I know my son has memorized from the story, but this evening he surprised me.  He recognized the word stop! without any prompting from me!  It's fun having him participate in the story for once.

This week we also went to a local splash pad.  On Wednesdays during the summer they do special things for the kids.  This week was everything creepy crawly.  We went because we expected snakes, but there weren't any.  However, there were lots of other fun things to learn about.

There was a bee keeper there with his bees.  He had honey samples, dried honey comb, and beeswax.  It was fun explaining to my son how honey and beeswax are made.  This ultimately was his favorite part of the excursion.

A lady was there with lots of bugs in plastic for the kids to examine.  My son spent about an hour in this tent.  She was awesome with him!  She answered all of his questions, and told him lots of additional facts.  I expected this to be his favorite part of the day because he has been asking for weeks to see a bug in amber (thank you dinosaur train!), but it wasn't.

 Lowes was there as well.  They had brought a bunch of soil, pans, and flower seeds.  Kids were able to plant there own seeds, and now we are waiting for them to grow.

As you can see, I am finding lots of different learning opportunities for my son.  Even though I am still unable to do much (even our Wednesday outing was too much for me) I can still adequately teach him.  It is exciting to watch his little brain work, and it's nice to know that he will learn in spite of me.

Preschool Curriculum Part 3

The main piece of curriculum that I decided on was Before Five In A Row.  I purchased my book from Rainbow Resource for $35.00, but I know that you can find it for much cheaper elsewhere.  You can check homeschooling resale pages to find some deals.  I have also heard that you can sometimes find it at the library.

I really like this curriculum because it focuses on good books.  For those that choose, it gives you a passage of scripture to start the day/week off with that matches the theme of the book.  It also offers a lot of ideas on how to incorporate different subjects from the chosen book that week.  I plan on taking 1-2 weeks on each book (depending on how fast my son wants to go through it).  Some of the books are older and out of print.  I know I will probably have to use inter-library loan in order to find a few, but that is fine with me.

There are lots of outside sites that offer ideas on how to supplement each book.  I have found that I really like Homeschool Creations for their supplements.  They have different pages for sequencing, math, writing, letter recognition, colors, and much more.  I plan to laminate the pages that I like, and then I can have Isaac use a dry erase marker to work on it each day.  I am creating a folder for each book.  That way each week I can just grab it and go.  Laminated pages will work great for other kids in the future.

We also use ABC Mouse.  We have had a subscription for over a year now.  My son loves it!  We have a laptop set up so that he can do his homework while Daddy does his.  ABC Mouse is the reason Isaac has known his upper and lower case letters for about a year.  It's great!

This week I have started looking into coops.  I think I found one that I like, but I can't participate fully until after the baby due to an attendance clause.  However, they have public field trips every other week, family activities, and mom's night out that I can go to without being a full member.  We will have our first field trip on August 20th.  I am excited, so I hope that I am feeling well enough for an outing that day!

For the first time in about 4 years I ordered a new insert for my planner.  I cannot express how excited I was to open it!  I use Google calendar, but there is just something about being able to see everything on paper.  I have already started planning out the next month of activities.  This way I know when I need to request the books I need.  I plan on getting additional books to go along with the main book for the week.  This will help me expand on different aspects.

Curriculum Part 2

The first of my curriculum that I purchased has arrived.  I have had numerous friends recommend this book to help a child learn to read.  Everyone had such great things to say about it, so it has been on my list to buy for about a year and a half.  It will cost you around $15.00 if you purchase it new, but if you buy it off of half.com you can get it as low as $4.00 if you watch for a good deal.

I have always planned on starting this the year before my son would start kindergarten.  Which would put this a year away.  Isaac knows his upper and lower case letters fairly well.  I thought perhaps he might be ready for this a bit earlier which is why I purchased it for this year.

I think right now my plan is to focus on 1-2 letters a week.  I have lots of ideas in mind on how to implement the letters, but I will just have to see what works out for us.  I will see where Isaac is in about 6 months.  He may be ready for it then.

Preschool Curriculum Part 1

My posts regarding my preschool curriculum will come in a few posts.

About a year ago I wanted to start a preschool type program since I had a few kids that were going to Kindergarten that year.  I had purchased this book from Amazon because it had decent reviews, and I thought it would cover a lot of what needed to be covered before a child started Kindergarten.

Ultimately, it didn't work out at the time.  Most of the kids that I watched just weren't ready for the kind of activities in the book, so I just did it with the older kids.  Out of the kids that completed the activities they seemed to like them a lot.  At times the activities were much to young for them, so I would think this book would work best for 3-4 year olds.  Even though my son is within this age range, he doesn't want to complete the activities.  He would much rather watch someone else do them.

I think it will be useful to work on handwriting, so I will be using this as a supplemental aspect of my preschool curriculum.  Most of the book won't work for my son because he already knows his upper/lowercase letters, and numbers.  I will use some of the counting/math pages, the pages that work on cutting, and writing.

Pros

• The front of the book has a great assessment for the parent to complete on their child to help them know how ready their child is for Kindergarten. 
• Another aspect of this book that I like is that it has a perforated line to allow easy removal from the book.  This made it easy to make photocopies of the pages.  
• A variety of activities.
• Great for letter recognition

Cons

• Some activities seem way too easy while others seem quite difficult.

For those of you that are doing preschool at home, I would recommend that you buy pencil grips.  I bought a few packages because they are easily lost.  I know that most Kindergarten teachers wish that parents would teach their child the correct way to hold a pencil.  These will help with that.  I believe they work for both right and left handed children.  

If you bought both of these items you would spend $23.00.  I am keeping receipts for tax purposes, but I am not sure it will count for preschool.  

Our Choice to Homeschool

Some of you may already know that Derek and I are planning to homeschool any kids that we have.  It’s not something that I talk a lot about because some people are pretty judgmental regarding homeschooling.  Everyone has an opinion, but many of these opinions do not have many factual backings. 

I wasn’t ready to talk about our choice because I am nervous about it myself.  I didn’t want others to be negative regarding my choice because it would cause me to doubt myself more.  I know that I am capable of teaching my children what they need to know, but when you are first starting out in the world of homeschooling it is quite overwhelming.  There are lots of choices to be made.  Should we choose year round school, or tradition school years?  What curriculum should we choose?  How much religion do we want involved in the education?  What are the state specific laws?  Quite daunting! 

The main reason that we have chosen to homeschool is because there were obvious gaps in the education that both Derek and I received.  This made us want an alternative to public schooling since we know we live in a bad school district.  With the advent of Common Core Standards it has really driven home that we need to homeschool. 

I have been part of forums with nationwide experts, online discussions, and have done a ton of research regarding Common Core Standards.  Not even taking into consideration the data collection that is being done, the curriculum itself is pretty scary.  I left many of these forums with the distinct impression that they are trying slowly breakdown the family unit.  I’m not even talking the traditional family.  I’m talking a family in general.  Where children have two parents regardless of gender.  I have my own suspicions as to why the government may be trying to do this, but I will keep that to myself.  You can watch this video on Common Core to begin your own researching journey. 

My hope is that in addition to our regular family blog that I will update on our homeschooling journey.  The good, the bad, and the ugly.  I know I have many friends interested in homeschooling, so my hope is that this part of my blog will be helpful to you.  Perhaps my failures will keep you from making the same mistakes that I make along the way.