Welcome to The Adventures of Wise Owl
Welcome to The Adventures of Wise Owl
Who is Wise Owl?
Wise Owl is inspired by the life and stories of Master Adam Forest, a 5th degree Black Belt in Taekwondo. Master Adam ran his own Taekwondo club, which had a different twist to modern day clubs.
The Adventures of Wise Owl is a book series that takes you and your child on a journey and is designed to engage you in conversations with your child that promote active discussions on understanding the importance of kindness and empathy.
There is a name for this kind of growth, Emotional Intelligence. Children with high levels of emotional intelligence rank very high on life satisfaction and happiness scores. What more incentive could you need? Why not start your own journey with Wise Owl on this website to see how you can help your child develop emotional intelligence.
The Last 25 years gives a person a lot of stories that I would like to share so I would like to introduce:
The adventures of Wise Owl
I’m Taekwondo Master Adam Forest, a Taekwondo expert with 25 years’ experience competing and running a Taekwondo club. That length of time gives a person a lot of experience to learn from and stories to tell, and I’d like to share them with you.
Wow, I am so excited to share my story with you, the stories I’ve shared with my students for the last 25 years.
Hi, my name is Adam Forest. I am a Master Instructor in Taekwondo.
THE BEGINNING
I grew up in the competitive world that surrounds Taekwondo, and every Saturday I would take part in the local tournaments and chase after gold medals.
One day many years into my practice, my instructor asked me to start my own school. I did, and that became the focus of my energy for the next 25 years. Soon after opening the club, with the welfare of my students in my hands, I became very disenchanted with the tournament scene. It was very egocentric and there was this ‘winner takes all’ mentality that left me uncomfortable.
I thought Taekwondo was more than that.
So, I did some research and history painted a very different picture. History showed that traditional Taekwondo was a martial art. Poetry, calligraphy, social skills were all part of the learning process.
Somewhere along the way we lost something.
THE PIVOTAL MOMENT
This was my pivotal moment. The point when I pulled back from chasing gold medals and started introducing stories to the student focused on kindness and empathy.
I remember those days very well. I approached our local women’s shelter and asked if there was anything we could do to help. The Shelter Society was really excited to have us onboard. We established the following goals:
- To raise awareness of the women’s shelter and raise badly needed funds.
- To teach the students the importance of empathy and giving back to the community.
THE JOURNEY TOWARDS THE ADVENTURES OF WISE OWL
As I continued to research traditional Taekwondo, I would constantly see references to storytelling. I adopted this style of teaching with my students.
At this point you might be wondering why I’m telling you this story? It is relevant, trust me!
I would tell the students stories over and over during their time with me, stories that highlighted the importance of empathy, kindness, giving back, and how this contributes to happiness in life for both the individual and others. I then began to get feedback from students who had graduated from the program, and the feedback was an instructor’s dream come true. The students were actually listening and absorbing the messages within the stories.
I remember one student telling me, ‘You know, I now always hold the door open for everyone’. Another young student on her Black Belt essay on ‘what Taekwondo means to me’ wrote “it warms my heart when I know how much good we did for the women in our community”.
Maybe I have to explain my reaction to this feedback a little. In the early days of the club, the kids could have described me as the toughest trainer, or the program to be focused on training and winning gold medals (which they did too).
Instead, they chose to describe their journey at the club with fond memories on the helpful things they did, or the kind habits they learned.
Success! I had succeeded in my mission to bring the traditional values of Taekwondo back into focus.
Rolling out the success through The Adventures of Wise Owl
I have written down all the stories that I shared with my students. The stories that have led to a wealth of great feedback from students who have listened, learned, grown, and blossomed.
Now, I would like you and your child to join me on The Adventures of Wise Owl journey. This book series is designed to help you start discussions with your child. Let Wise Owl introduce ideas, concepts and examples that enable active participation while learning skills and capabilities in kindness and empathy.
This type of growth and development is focused on Emotional Intelligence. The value of emotional intelligence in children is its contribution to kinder, happier, and more empathetic children. In fact, children with high Emotional Intelligence rank very high in the life satisfaction and happiness scores.
Research has shown that children with highly developed emotional intelligence generally have a more stable life, greater empathy and compassion, and are very good at building relationships.
I wrote this series of books to help you develop emotional intelligence in your children, to help them develop crucial life skills.
Emotional Intelligence is a learned skillset. Why not add The Adventures of Wise Owl to your parenting toolkit?
I have used these stories for the last 25 years to inspire my students in developing kindness, helpfulness, and empathy. Now it’s your turn, and I look forward to hearing your success stories too.
Storytelling. This is how I taught Emotional Intelligence.
The adventures of Wise Owl
Parenting can be as fun as a good book
Story telling is the best for deep learning
The Importance of Bedtime reading
Here are some of the Titles that will be available in our wise Owl Adventure series
A sample of The Adventures of Wise Owl book series
All the stores in the series were inspired by real events that took place in my Taekwondo School. These have now been used to help build stories that allow for discussion and engagement with your child to help you build emotional intelligence and educate them on how to process thoughts.
Let’s take a story focused on ‘being a nice person’ for example.
When reading the story, Master Wise Owl will ask the children to think about when they are old and have grandparents – and to think about how they would want to be known by their grandkids. Would they want to be known as a mean and grumpy person, or a kind, generous and helpful person?
At this point, you stop reading the story and start a discussion focused on this idea. Each of the stories lead you and the child towards a conversation on your behaviours, thoughts to help process the kind of person you want to be, and the important personality traits and characteristics to possess in life.
Let’s take this a little further to show you how this can be developed. So, your child says in your bedtime discussion that they want to be known as a kind person, yet the next day they do something mean to their sibling. Instead of getting mad, you can refer back to last night’s reading and how they said they wanted to be known as a kind person to help get them back on track.
It works remarkably well, and over time you will see significant improvements in your child’s behavior.
Here are some topics that we address in our adventure series:
- I am afraid to fail
- I gave my teacher a compliment today
- I let my little brother play with my toys
- Honor my parents weekend
- Grandma /Grandpa tell me a story when you were little
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The Gentle Teaching of story telling
Are you looking for the best way to channel your child’s energy into positive actions that lead to positive outcomes?
Trying to find some exciting adventure stories for your child that also provide life lessons and double as both children and parenting books?
If the below list of online searches seems familiar, look no further – we have what you are looking for!
- Children's Books
- Kid's Adventure Books
- Parenting help books
- Raising good kids
- Growing Emotionally Intelligent Children
What is a Discussion book and how does it work
What is a Discussion Book and how does it work?The adventures of Wise Owl book series are in a category of their own. We have used these stories in the classroom and found that encouraging healthy discussions with the young students was a great learning tool. More than that, we turned the discussions into actions and events.
For example, let’s take a look at one of the stories in the series on ‘honoring your parents’ weekend’. This is how it works.
At the end of the Taekwondo class, I would ask a question. In this example, it would be:
“Hey everybody, it’s Friday today so guess what tomorrow is?”
The kids would guess and after a bit of lively discussion I would say
“It’s honor your parents’ weekend”.
From there, I would ask the kids questions like ‘why would we want to honor our parents?’.
I would let them explain why parents should be honored. After the discussion got going and I got the buy-in from the students that their parents should be honored, I would turn the discussion back to the students on how we can honor our parents.
Again, in the discussion we build a plan on the best way to honor our parents. I would encourage and help the discussion by making suggestions like parents’ love getting hugs and kisses, and lots of ‘I love you mom/dad’.
The reason this system really works is because the parents can hear the discussion taking place during the taekwondo class between me and the students, and therefore become my accountability partners
Let me recap what just happened in the class:
- I had a discussion with the students about the importance of honoring your parents.
- I threw in a little incentive by explaining that if you want to be a true martial artist, learning to respect your parent is a key part of being a good Black Belt.
- This action plan comes with many benefits including teaching good habits, and that positive attention is much more gratifying than negative attention.
- Other benefits include creating harmony in the home and giving the child more responsibility and accountability for family dynamics.
- As the child develops these skills, they are now building and using emotional intelligence.
Calling all parents and grandparents, you are a crucial part of this learning process. As you read these adventures, please stop reading and start discussing. In the above example, you might want to stop at the word honoring. You can ask your child what they think that word means. Now you are part of the story where Master Wise Owl talks about why we should honor our parents.
Again, stop reading and start discussing. You will be surprised the incredible chats you will have with your child or grandchild.
Just like a bonded with the students over our journey to their Black Belt, you will bond with your child or grandchild and watch them grow and develop their emotional intelligence.
Please remember that these books are at an advanced reading level, and you will play an active part in how the book is read, understood, and digested by your child.
Let the Adventure Begin
Again, stop reading and start discussing. You will be surprised the incredible chats you will have with your child or grandchild.
Just like a bonded with the students over our journey to their Black Belt, you will bond with your child or grandchild and watch them grow and develop their emotional intelligence.
When it comes to education, one of the biggest challenges parents have, is finding a way to teach their children to be more respectful to their mom and dad, or indeed to everyone.
Books can be a wonderful resource for teaching children, using storytelling to educate children on life lessons, important life skills and emotional intelligence.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when raising their children is to buy them more and more stuff, both little and big children. This doesn’t help children understand earning respect. Instead, we propose that you shower your children with time instead of gifts. Our book series is designed to engage your child and enable you to have deep and meaningful discussions with them.
Building emotional intelligence in your children is by far the absolute best gift you can give them. This will set your child up for a life full of successful situations, which can also be defined as ‘I’m doing well, I’ve had a good life mom/dad – thank you.
The Adventures of Wise Owl is a series of adventure books that will engage your child, they will become part of the class, they will learn, and they will become accountable for their actions. This journey you can take together will provide amazing outcomes for your children.
I invite you to join the Adventures of Wise Owl.
Best Wishes,
Adam Forest
AKA Wise Owl
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