You did it. You made it to Winter Break and you've registered for your classes. It's time for some R&R!

Hold up! While the last semester is over, and now you can take some time to recharge, it's wise to use this time to prepare for next semester as well. This prep needn't take a lot of time and energy! Most prep you can do from your computer during a lunch break.

Here's how to utilize that time for the maximum benefit for next semester:

Rent your textbooks for next semester.
Once you get your schedule, check to see which books your professor requires. My college allows me to check for these books online, and provides purchasing options.

Finding textbooks online is a snap! Check your college's website for a textbook link, and then search the section numbers for your class's required textbooks.

But I never buy the books from my school...I nab those ISBN numbers and take them over to Amazon because the prices are cheaper! I once got a textbook for $0.01!

This is a $14.99 savings! I purchased this book and got the chore out of the way. Always check around for cheaper prices on required books. Sometimes, like this book, the shipping costs more than the book itself (that's usually a good thing)!

Buy new school supplies.
I love this time because I get new pens and new notebooks. There's no need to go all out, but be sure to replenish printer cartridges and buy more printer paper. Create a Dropbox account if you don't have one, which I find as one of my most relied upon resources for backing up and transferring files (i.e. if I have a presentation, it's easier to retrieve from Dropbox than search for a USB drive).

Check out my board: Best School Supplies for 30 Somethings.


Organize last semester's mess, if there is one.
As much as I am a proponent for staying organized, by the time the semester closes out, my desk, binder, tote bag, and even sometimes my car are a hot mess. I think my organizational system died this semester right after midterms! I have a huge stack of unorganized papers on my desk, my binder is...somewhere, and my tote bag has a nice padding of receipts at the bottom. Yikes!

This was even after I had sorted some papers! My desk is still a mess but I am slowly making a dent. I am going to have to re-evaluate my in-semester system!

I use Winter Break to take everything out of folders, piles, and binders and organize it by class. Along with the notebook I used to take notes for each class, I put everything in a folder and file it away. This way I can retrieve things easily in the future.

Reread notes.
This may be a habit only I do, but I recommend to anyone. Reread your notes. You'll be surprised at how much you forget between semesters. Sometimes, we are in such a hurry to just get through class that we really don't commit the information to long term memory. Don't think so? Quick! Recall what vocab words you learned at the beginning of last semester!

You probably had to think about it for a bit. But that's okay! That's why note taking - and note keeping - is really important. Reread those notes, especially for prerequisite classes that you had to take in Fall to prep for a Spring class.

Evaluate your performance for Fall, and research how you can make Spring better.
No one is perfect and everyone can use improvement. Take stock of how your Fall semester went down. What part were you not happy about? Here's some categories to consider:

• Organization system - did it hold up for you? For me, it failed. I will be re-evaluating my single binder, separate notebook system.
• Group projects - how did they work out? Did you do your part? Did others do their part? If you struggled, you may have to plan your time better. If others struggled, you may have to plan to take a leadership role in future group projects.
• Essays - Did your writing skills make the grade? Did you miss points because of formatting, grammar, lack of required components, or you completely did the assignment wrong? You may want to bone up on your writing skills by either taking an online workshop, research college essay writing, or check out a book on the subject. Now would be a great time to hire a tutor!
• Assignments - Did you do all your assignments or did you forget a few? You may want to learn to plan your time better. Making time for all your assignments - and even doing a few ahead of time - may save your butt come Spring semester!
• Presentations - How did yours go? Do you feel that other people have more polished presentations? Do you have stage jitters? Was your presentation rushed? You may want to check out a Udemy Powerpoint course, or plan to take a Speech class next semester. And...be sure to plan ahead for your assignment!
• Test taking - Did you bomb a test? Did you think you were prepared but it turned out you really weren't? Hire a tutor to go over note-taking and studying skills. Make a resolution to pay better attention during class, to ask questions, and to read assigned reading.
• ...and more! If you feel there is anything else, run a Pinterest search for how to solve the issue. Chances are someone has written about what you're going through, and has a solution to offer! 

Get started early!
Oh boy. I can already hear the disagreement on this one. But it's the holidays! I have stuff to do! Cookies to bake! Peppermint cocoa to drink! Yes, you do. As do I. But that doesn't mean you can't get started early! But you don't have to if you don't want to.

I try to get started early just because I know I can procrastinate when I really don't want to do something. I can be an obdurate little 9 year old in a 35 year old's body, trust me. Knowing this about myself, I plan ahead.

So when I got my pair of penny-a-piece textbooks last week, I started reading one of them. I get my Christmas cookies, and I get my peppermint hot cocoa, don my fuzzy sock-slippers and my cat's favorite blankie, curl up with said cat and said textbook, and go to town. It really helps that all my distractions are gone too; I finished Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (OMG), Walking Dead is on hiatus (at least it has been since after the first episode, am I right?), and Holiday Baking Challenge has been polished off (go Jason!).

Made some of my Grandma's dry AF M&M cookies in honor of her passing in Spring Semester. The key is to use Crisco and brown sugar, and mini M&Ms for more chocolate per cookie real estate.

It may be helpful to pick a textbook of a topic that really interests you. I picked Miss America By Day because pageants always fascinated me from a psychological standpoint, and Marilyn Van Derbur's story is important. I'm already several chapters in, and I may just finish the thing off before school starts! I'm annotating as I go, but I'm not cracking out the notebook for notes. I have my limits, y'all.

I hope this list gives you some idea on how to prep. Planning ahead is really the key to success for me, as you can see. Hopefully I can make some important changes before Spring! What other ways do you prepare for the new semester?

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I was tired. I had read several children's lit books, trekked to several bookstores, and had read pretty much every anti-bias children's lit booklist to be found. Spurred on by Anti-Bias Curriculum's requirements for anti-biased books, I pressed on, and turned to the last book I had found.

I Am Jazz
I Am Jazz is a book co-written by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, with Jazz herself being the titular character of the book. It is an autobiographical pre-school age picture book, chronicling the first few years of Jazz's life, especially as she discovered she is transgendered as a toddler.

I have been aware of Jazz Jennings for a while, and if you watch TV or Youtube you may have come across her. I came across her story when a few transgendered friends of mine posted about her on Facebook some years ago. Every once in a while I would check her Youtube channel to see how her story has progressed. Jazz is now a teenager, and is facing a whole new set of challenges that are common among transgendered teens. I was interested to see that she had published I Am Jazz, and decided to buy it.

I Am Jazz is intended for preschool age to young grade school age children.

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See Part One here.

'The next leg of my quest to find a great anti-bias book had me looking at other anti-bias themes. I was a bit sad to abandon STEM representation, but Ada Twist, Scientist came the closest to fulfilling my needs for this assignment, but missed out on targeted audience age ranges. That left me needing a book that satisfied Anti-Bias Curriculum's requirements for children ages 3 to 5.

I set out to find booklists with anti-bias books, but only found a few. Pinterest had a few hits, and I gathered four into a bookstore shopping cart and checked out, hoping for the best.

All the Colors of the Earth
This is a cute book written and illustrated by Sheila Hamanaka that gently shows children how everyone has a different skin tone and different physical qualities that make them unique. The illustrations are realistic oil-painted scenes, and the prose is a very simple poem.

All the Colors of the Earth compares children's skin and hair to colors and textures found in nature.

There are no main characters, but tons of little kids shown playing, pretending, and enjoying each other's differences. There are plenty of opportunities for the teacher to bring sounds and textures into the experience, with bear roars, whispers, and musical sounds - like rainmakers and chimes - being mentioned.

I do feel like the poem stretched a bit to make things work, and for the book itself to be overly simple. However, it was my favorite multi-cultural book after perusing several others. I kept it in mind and moved to another.

The Teddy Bear
I was drawn to this book after visiting Peace Library's anti-bias book list, as it provided visibility to an often invisible group of people. Written by David McPhail, the story is one about a boy who loses his favorite toy in a restaurant, only for said toy to be adopted by a homeless man who finds it in the trash.

The Teddy Bear features the often excluded homeless population in its storyline.

I found the illustrations to be a little outdated, but I think children might find them appealing still. The prose was easy to read and follow, and did not have words that were too big for preschoolers to understand. The boy, who is not named, loses his Teddy Bear at a restaurant, but soon forgets about the toy when it could not be found. Unbeknownst to him, the Teddy Bear - alone and frightened - had been thrown out in the trash, where a homeless man finds it and adopts it as his own.

While at first frightened, the Teddy Bear soon finds a home with the homeless man, and waits patiently while the homeless man makes his rounds during the day. However, one day the homeless man leaves the Teddy Bear to wait on a bench, and the little boy recognizes it while passing by. The boy grabs up the Teddy Bear, but then sees the homeless man crying when he returned to the park bench to find his new companion missing.

The boy returns the Teddy Bear to him in a show of compassion, understanding that the bear meant more to this man than it did to him.

I loved this book because of the message of compassion, and also how it portrayed the homeless man. Any adult who reads this will know that the man in this book is homeless, and along with the word 'homeless' comes with certain other words that have become a part of the stereotype of homelessness: ugly, dirty, lazy, crazy, etc. However, anyone who has spent time with homeless people knows that this is a harmful stereotype.

The book tells the story that returns the humanity to the homeless character. He is seen as a person who has basic needs and wants much like any other. He needs a place to stay, he needs things to do, he needs food to eat, and he needs company in the face of loneliness. When everyone's choices are reduced to these concepts, it's not hard to see how everyone is in pursuit of some similar things. The boy sees this when he sees the homeless man crying over the loss of the Teddy Bear, and has compassion, understanding as only a child could what a simple Teddy Bear can do for someone so distraught.

While I loved this book, I didn't choose it for the project. I felt that for the teacher of this class, this may not have been a wise choice, as it could be seen as promoting putting children in dangerous situations. I wasn't a fan of the boy's parents not staying by his side while in the park. It seemed to me that for a moment, the parents didn't even know that their kid was gone! Compassion is a very real thing that the world needs more of, but that doesn't mean the parents shouldn't be watching their child.

Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born
Ok first of all, let me say I was a little starstruck when I got the book and saw it was written by Jamie Lee Curtis. If she ever reads this, all I can say is I loved you as Jessica Day's mom! Plus many other characters!

But anyway. I picked this book because it is about adopted children. I have a cousin who is adopted, and ever since she had been adopted when I was 14, I wanted to adopt kids. It is still a dream of mine. I always thought, "Why make more when there are plenty of other kids who need mommies?" While I have yet to realize my dream, I still hold adopted and foster children as important. I was glad to see that books exist for adopted kids.

Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born is a story about the day a child gets adopted.

The premise of the book is simple. A child wants their adoptive mommy and daddy to tell them the story of the night they were born. However, it is obvious that the child has heard this story numerous times before, and tells it themselves (with a photo album labelled 'ME' at the ready)! The child talks about how their parents received a call in the middle of the night, and how their parents rushed onto a plane and to a hospital to meet them. The book also talks about how the child was adopted from a mother who was too young to take care of them, and how the adoptive parents settled into parenthood.

The book lets the audience know that, like any biological family might've done for the child, this adoptive set of parents made sure their adopted child knew they were wanted and loved.

I found this book to be very cute and easy to read, but I found the illustrations by Laura Cornell hard to decipher. The book is copyrighted in 1996, and shares the same artistic style of the 90s as Rugrats. I don't know if little kids would also have trouble understanding the images, but with my poor eyesight I decided there was another book to be presented.

This left me with my fourth and final book, but...that's a blog for another day!
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