How to Make Friends & Influence People

Making Friends - 5 Ways to Meet New Kids When You Home School

Everyone always asks me if I get lonely when I home school, since I don’t have any friends. But, I think it’s a silly question, because I have a lot of friends.

This is my 5 favorite ways about how to make friends when you home school. I’m going to tell you, so you won’t have to worry if I have enough social time, or not.

Favorite Way #1: Be active in your community.

Get involved in stuff that happens in your town. Join the Arbor Society, or at least show up when you have a chance to plant trees, and then really help out. Work hard so they’ll call you and invite you to come the next time. People remember you when you work real hard.

Favorite Way #2: When there’s a crisis, offer to help.

When the Tornado struck Holly, Colorado earlier this month, I went to help out. I wanted to help people who lost their homes. I helped pack lunches, carried boxes of water, loaded up trash, and helped wipe off tables after the people ate breakfast. Their homes were destroyed and they really appreciated having good food to eat.

Favorite Way #3: Go to Church.

Go to church, get to know Christ as your personal Savior, and invite everyone you meet to come to church too. Get involved in youth group, go on missions trips, and go to camp. Enjoy the activities and take leadership roles whenever possible.

Favorite Way #5: Join Boy Scouts and become an Eagle Scout.

If you’re a guy, join Boy Scouts and take it seriously. When I’m wearing my uniform I take my pledge to help others seriously, then when I take my uniform off, I still help others, because it’s a good thing to do. I am active in events the Boy Scouts do, and I try to attend every event. Like one weekend, we went skiing, I had a great time with my friends, got some exercise, and learned to ski on Monarch.

Do you want to know more about how to make friends?

Or would you like to know how to write articles like this?

I learned in home school and I signed up for my Mom’s FREE ebook “5 Simple Ways to Write Your Own Ebook” and a FREE Subscription to her ezine at http://ebookinfo.cn and now I’m working on my first ebook “How To Make Friends When You Home School.” Stay tuned in to my blog at http://kentonverhoeff.blogspot.com and I’ll tell you when I get it done.

© 2007 - Kenton Verhoeff All rights reserved.

Accolaids - for my work

It's great to see that kind of ambition at such a young age. I thought
the article was wonderful. Congratulations Kenton. I bet
your books will be on the shelves of Barnes and Noble one day.

Cheryl M.


In Reference to my article posted on ezinearticles.com

Article Marketing is for Kids too,

5 Easy Steps So Kids Can Write Articles Too

By Kenton Verhoeff

I learn at home, and mom insists that writing is important. I agree. But, I don’t like to just write for a grade, so I wanted something more important to do with my work.

I write articles to sell my books. It’s called Article Marketing.

I write some articles about things I wanted to share, and Mom gave me a list of topics I could write about. (She copied them from the ezinearticles.com site.)

I picked some topics and started organizing my work. There’s a simple five step process that I use to write almost everything.

First Step

Pick a topic and write a question or thought to introduce the idea I want to write about.

Second Step

Write a paragraph or two about the topic. Answer the question I asked, or expand my idea.

Third Step

Tell something about the idea. Why did I want to write about it? What makes it important.

Forth Step

Solve any problems I created with questions.

Fifth Step

Give the story a name. If you use something like steps in your title people read it a lot. They like catch words like easy, simple, and magic too.

Then you put it all together, count the words (I use word count), and put it in the submit place on ezinearticles.com Your article has to have at least 250 words to be qualified.

I try to write more words, but some articles are just short. Mom says my articles should be between 400 and 700 words. But, she said that’s for the best noticed articles.

I use keywords in my articles so people can find them online too. This article is about Article Marketing for Kids.

Kenton Verhoeff writes children’s books. He uses computer generated art in his books and tells stories that teach kids something good. His stories are simple and easy to read. Kenton is Home Schooled at Buchanan Academy. His website is at http://www.freewebs.com/kentonverhoeff and you can read his blog at http://kentonverhoeff.blogspot.com

How can a 12 Year Old Kid Like Me Write a Book?

By Kenton Verhoeff

I wrote my first book when I was just 9. It’s called “Corky the Happy Lizard”. I wrote it because I like komodo dragons. They’re awesome. Someday, I hope Corky grows up and becomes a Komodo.

But, I wanted to tell you how to write a book.

First you sit down with a pencil and paper and make an outline.

Mine is pretty simple. It looks like this:

Title
Introduction
First Action
Second Action
Third Action
Results of Action
Conclusion
Bio

Then I fill in all those items with some paragraphs and sentences. When I think of something really interesting I always put under one of those titles. I have many outlines, but only some of them become books. This is one I wrote this winter.

Title

Riding Bikes on the Snow

Introduction

You’d think it’s hard to ride bikes on snow, but in my town lots of people do it. One guy rides a bike because his car is stuck in the snow. He can’t get his car out, so he rides his bike. Another guy rides his bike on the snow because he got too many DUI’s and they won’t let him drive a car.

I ride bikes on the snow because it’s fun. But if mom catches me, I’m toast, so I don’t do it often. But, this is a story about riding bikes on the piles of snow after the 2006 blizzard in my hometown.

First Action

Riding bikes on snow is kind of dangerous, because sometimes you slip and slide in the ruts that cars make. Weaving in and out of traffic with a bike is really dangerous because cars are really heavy and they can’t stop.

Second Action

Riding bikes up and down plowed snow piles sometimes results in snow cave offs and people get trapped in an ice avalanche. Ice avalanches are different than snow avalanches because when people get trapped in ice, it’s big chunks and they can still breath, usually. But ice is heavy and it does things like crush people. So it isn’t any safer.

Third Action

When several people are riding on snow piles, they run into each other and make bigger ice avalanches. Sometimes they crash so hard that they cave off whole chunks of ice and have to ride the ice down the snow pile. If they miss, they end up under the ice and we have to call paramedics.

Paramedics are those people who drive the ambulance and fix people until they can get them to a hospital.

Results of Action

The guys from the city and the police get really upset when kids get caught riding bikes in the snow piles. They even had to arrest some kids and take them to jail until their parents come to get them out. And then, they don’t get their bikes back until they pay restitution. It’s expensive to pay restitution. Really it’s cheaper just to get a new bike, but that wouldn’t be the right thing to do.

Conclusion

When your mom says don’t ride bikes in the snow, she really means it. It’s a good thing to listen to your mom and not do things when she tells you not to do them. Learning lessons from just being obedient is a lot less painful, and lots cheaper than learning them from experience.

Bio

This is the part where I tell everyone about me.

That’s how I get started. Then I design a character for my book and start writing from my character’s perspective. I try to teach a lesson in my books, because kids are still learning a lot of stuff and when I teach a lesson in my book, they can learn from what I know.

It’s kind of like being a parent, but not really like having a kid.

Kenton Verhoeff writes children’s books. He uses computer generated art in his books and tells stories that teach kids something good. His stories are simple and easy to read. Kenton is Home Schooled at Buchanan Academy. His website is at http://www.freewebs.com/kentonverhoeff and you can read his blog too.

Introducing me...

I'm Kenton and that's me in the green picture hugging a tree. I like having fun, being silly, and writing.

"Corky the Happy Lizard" by Kenton Verhoeff

Corky the Happy Lizard is about a little green striped lizard I found in the front yard one summer. I named him and watched him play around in the grass.

Then I wrote a book about him.

He met some butterflies and a dragon fly.

If you're interested in reading Corky the Happy Lizard, you can buy the book online at Lulu.com.

The link is http://www.lulu.com/content/142470