PENCIL TIPS 2.0

Pencil Tips 2.0 is a fun, creative educational resource for classrooms, homeschoolers, and one on one learning. It is filled with comprehensive activities, plans, educational units, makerspace style puzzle templates, books, and art. Most of the content can be adapted to various age levels and learning styles. Activities can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make them. All that is required is imagination and a love for creativity!

Pencil Tips 2.0 offers educational digital downloadable units as well as physical books and art. Once you make a purchase of a digital unit, you will receive an email or text to download the PDF unit you have purchased. The units are intended to be at a fantastic price point to benefit both of us, so you will find the samples watermarked and the PDF stamped for the new owner. Books and art are purchased as physical items and shipped separately.

BIO
Joy Hess is a storyteller, artist, educator, and entrepreneur who has always followed the thread of curiosity, compassion, and creativity, no matter where life has taken her. She is the author of four books and the founder of Pencil Tips 2.0, a creative educational platform offering digital downloads, books, art, and MakerSpace inspired projects for all ages.

Joy has been an educator, corporate professional, consultant, small business owner, artist, and writer. She holds a master’s degree in K - 12 education. In 17 years of teaching, primarily in K to 5th grade, she earned both Early Childhood Certification and National Board Certification for Professional Teaching Standards, recognized as the gold standard in teacher certification. She received National Board Certification in 1997, and at that time, she was one of only about 600 teachers in the country with this distinction, honored at a White House gala hosted by former President Bill Clinton. Today, more than 133,000 + teachers nationwide have achieved National Board Certification.

With humble beginnings, Joy’s love for art and imagination was sparked as a child with a brand new box of crayons, a few cherished markers, and a tablet, a treasure that meant everything to her. That simple gift lit a lifelong passion for creating things that mattered.

After pausing her teaching career to raise a family, Joy opened her first educational business, Pencil Tips, to support educators and homeschool parents with engaging, meaningful resources. Life then took an unexpected turn when she entered the corporate healthcare world, serving for 22 years in major philanthropic roles. During that time, she played a part in transformational projects including the building of a new hospital, breast care center, and hospice residence, along with many smaller community initiatives. Through this work, she helped raise over $50 million in support of healthcare and outreach programs across her community and state.

During that same chapter, Joy followed her artistic heart into entrepreneurship once again by opening a wooden puzzle manufacturing company, where she combined watercolor, design, and hands on craftsmanship. The business grew nationally and internationally, and she remains deeply proud of the products that evolved from it. Eventually, the manufacturing demands pulled her away from the creative process she loved most, and after eight years she closed production to return fully to watercolor, writing, and the many books she had begun over the years.

At heart, Joy has always been, and will always be, a teacher. Pencil Tips 2.0 is filled with creative, imaginative activities she used in her own classroom and with her children as they were growing up. It reflects a lifelong belief that learning is a way of life, one that grows, changes, and renews itself again and again. Some ideas may feel brand new, others may spark an “aha” moment, an enlightened discovery, a cool idea forgotten about, a quick needed activity, or something familiar but structured in a fresh new way.

Today, whether she is designing puzzles, dreaming up lessons, illustrating storybook worlds, or coloring outside the lines, Joy believes that creativity is one of the most powerful tools for healing, connection, and growth. She is honored to share that spark with others, one page, one pencil stroke, and one story at a time.

Please enjoy Pencil Tips 2.0… and always, Sharpen Your Mind.