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Repost: Stuff to do in Summer

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Hi everyone.

I made a list years ago of things to do in summer. We posted it to our refrigerator so that if any child came to me saying, “I’m bored; I have nothing to do,” I could simply point a silent finger at the door and they would know to scan the list before asking for any more ideas. Usually, they found something.

The key to using la liste is making sure that you have the supplies already stocked up in your house. Don’t put “oil pastels” as an option if you haven’t bought them. Make sure everything that they may want to do, can be done.

Before I post the list, here are a few ideas to consider as well:

1. Create an art table that houses markers, paintbrushes, watercolors, glue (of varying styles), paper, pipe cleaners, string, tape, staplers, scrapbooking pages, old magazines, newspaper, construction paper, various sizes of oil paint canvases, and so on. (We use tin cans from beans etc. to hold the paintbrushes or markers.) Purchase colorful clay to bake into novel items. You might add a book or two on art (how to draw, paint, oil pastel, etc.)

2. Create a nature station which includes binoculars, birding guides, seeds, trowels, and a cheap digital camera for photo ops (when the squirrels fight or you see a cool caterpillar).

3. Tune up bicycles (air in tires, brakes that work), purchase a badminton or croquet set, collect water guns and pool toys.

All right, without further ado: here’s the list!

  • Paint
  • Make play-doh
  • Create a collage
  • Take a walk
  • Swing
  • Climb a tree
  • Listen to music
  • Read a book
  • Read a magazine
  • Legos
  • Playmobiles (or whatever toys you have that your kids love)
  • Reorganize your bedroom (moving furniture around)
  • Sew
  • Learn a new recipe
  • Hammer nails into scrap wood (for some reason, this is always satisfying)
  • Jump rope
  • Take the dog for a walk
  • Fill the wading pool and splash
  • Shoot each other with water guns
  • Blow bubbles
  • Sidewalk chalk the driveway
  • Inventory the house (count windows, steps, pillows, door knobs, mirrors, paintings, photographs) Use a clipboard to record findings.
  • Write a poem
  • Make a phone call to grandma
  • Email Dad/Mom at work
  • Play a board game
  • Make a picnic under a tree
  • Lie on your back and look at clouds
  • Watch a movie
  • Play a video game
  • Create fairy houses with twigs, moss, leaves, acorns. Make fairies out of scrap fabric, pipe cleaners and wooden beads.
  • Create shoe box houses for little dolls
  • Catch tadpoles (in a local stream)
  • Catch fireflies in a jam jar
  • Do something for someone else (vacuum a room, empty the dishwasher, fold clean clothes)
  • Sort clothes that are too small and give to charity
  • Alphabetize the spices in the spice cabinet
  • Learn to do a cartwheel
  • Run through the sprinkler
  • Play HORSE with the basketball
  • Play jacks
  • Play pick up sticks
  • Play a musical instrument
  • Dress up in dress up clothes
  • Face paint
  • Draw with oil pastels or charcoal
  • Roast hotdogs in an open fire; make s’mores
  • Collect wild flowers for a centerpiece at dinner
  • Memorize riddles, poems, rhymes
  • Act out a favorite play or story
  • Polish nails
  • Rub on temporary tattoos
  • Learn to braid hair
  • Make a fort in the living room
  • Study a tide pool (if you’re lucky enough to live near one!)

Please add to the list in the comments section! I’m sure you’ll have ideas I haven’t included.

Posted in Activities, Appreciating Art, Brave Writer Philosophy, Family Notes, Nature Walks, Unschooling | 4 Comments »

Congratulations Class of 2010

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

I had the privilege of speaking to the homeschool graduation at our homeschool co-op over the weekend. These were the kids I’ve taught for ten years, some of them my son’s best friends. They voted me into this position and it felt like a great honor to be the one to deliver the keynote. So here it is, for those who’ve asked me about it.

–

Noah, my oldest, said to me once when I tried to shoehorn him into my fear-based vision of what his future ought to be: “Mom, you raised me in an unconventional way; now you want me to be a conventional person?”

Ouch! Zinged by my own values! By my own kid!

Homeschooling, whether you realize it yet or not, is the radical unconventional status-quo defying choice your parents made on your behalf when you were too young to know better. Instead of yellow school buses, apples for the teacher and lunch boxes, you stayed home. Let’s face it. Your parents were the hippies of the 1990’s!

Your mom read Charlotte’s Web from a rocking chair while you assembled Legos. A big brown UPS box delivered brand new workbooks, still shiny and blank. You didn’t have due dates or grades until your mother panicked (around age 13) and suddenly got crazy grading and assigning and making you sit in a straight backed chair to write papers… until you slowly both got comfortable again and moved back to the couch. Homeschool for this bunch of graduates meant Learning Tree co-op and camp, prom in a church and for some, church in a school!

You did math with our favorite math tutor, Mrs. Steiner, or videos or apple pies. You learned to write with me, or through tears, or on computers with Facebook status updates. Foreign languages were dead or silent even though so many of you are going on mission trips to Mexico or Europe for YWAM now. Shout out to DTS students from Hawaii to Germany to Ireland!

In other words, ‘homeschooled’ is the unconventional distinct identity you will always have - the “two truths and a lie” trump card, the one thing that makes you different from others. And that’s a big deal.

In fact, even more than the homeschooling itself, the choice to homeschool by your parents… that choice ought to have formed a part of your character that will accompany and guide you for the rest of your lives.

Your moms and dads made a brave choice back in 1996 when they decided to turn their backs to the culture to keep you home. It probably didn’t always look brave to you when you when they monitored your computer activity and supervised your reading and music choices! Still, they were pioneers in their own right.

They weren’t homeschooled. They blundered forward armed with a few books and a couple of models of what it might look like. Your moms literally gave up career opportunities to spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with you. You know what happened at soccer games you played? Other moms would find out that you were homeschooled and they’d say to your mom: “Oh I could NEVER do that. My kids would drive me crazy.” But your moms thought, “That’s so sad. I love being with my kids.” And they meant it. Even when you did drive them crazy!

As you go off to college or the military or a career, forging a path for yourself, I want you to remember that the legacy of homeschooling has less to do with text books and literature. Nope, it’s a model for how you might courageously live your own life. Ask yourself these kinds of questions that your parents asked themselves:

  • Will you be content to perpetuate the status quo as you understand it?
  • Or will you, like your parents, challenge the system and be willing to adopt a standard, a philosophy, a set of beliefs or practices that make the world a better place? That ensure that the children you raise will be as nurtured, valued and adventurous as your parents….

There are two words that characterize the life you’ve led so far: Risk and Adventure.

Your parents, the ones who said no to R movies and who monitored your MySpace, who required you to finish math classes even when you thought they were pointless… those parents are the original risk-takers and adventurers in your family. They’ve modeled for you how to stand up to the culture and say, “I’m willing to risk my reputation on my kids, for the sake of the future.”

You were our grand experiment. We asked, “Can we educate our kids, at home, without the support and props of school and culture?” The ghosts of public school past haunted us - we had to fight to keep them at bay sometimes. But you may be different. You get to decide whether or not to homeschool your kids and if you do, you’ll finally be able to answer the decades old question: Just how much grammar really is necessary in home education? We still don’t know.

The truth is, because you’ve already lived as a counter-cultural person, I hope that spirit, that energy, that chutzpah will govern your future choices. Be as daring as your parents have been to challenge “what’s normal,” to be the risk-takers who put their ideals into action. Be deliberate about your choices (researching, discussing, conscientiously thinking through the consequences of your choices not just on your own life, but on the lives of those entrusted to you). Discover other ways of living, other worldviews (so many of you are already on your way to doing just that!). Let yourselves become the people your parents dreamed you would be, even if that means choosing differently than your parents. Because, after all, your parents chose differently than theirs did.

You were given:

  • A quality, personalized education
  • A home environment that nurtured spiritual values, individuality and close family ties
  • A context that developed critical thinking and a commitment to making a difference

These are the core values of the home educators in this room. They are your core values too. How you take them into your future and nurture them now, on your own, is up to you!

Will you dig wells in central Africa to provide clean water to impoverished communities? Will you become a lawyer who defends the rights of the under privileged? Will you cultivate the arts and make your home a place where music and paintings are a natural part of the atmosphere? Will you make your faith relevant to your community? Will you earn more degrees and contribute your knowledge to the Great Conversation that spans the centuries?

Will you inspect railroads or start technology companies? Will you bear children and raise them to be the best individuals they can be?

No matter what you do… No matter where you go… Challenge yourself to explore alternate ways of thinking and living. Who knows what new form of education or family bonding will present itself in your generation?! Don’t assume that what everyone does is what everyone ought to do. Take the risks that lead you to an adventurous future, that contribute to a new way of seeing and being.

You are homeschool graduates… members of an exclusive club—the prototypes of what it means to put personal values ahead of cultural expectations. What will you do with that legacy!? Add me on Facebook and let me know what you did with the precious gift your parents gave you.

Congratulations to the class of 2010!

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Family Notes, General, Homeschool Advice, Tips for Teen Writers | 5 Comments »

Thoughts on the morning of my flight to Paris

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

My daughter, Johannah, lives in Paris right now. She’s an exchange student. She’s 20. When I was 20, I spent a year at a university in southern France. My mother came to visit me. Full circle.

I give a graduation speech in a couple of weeks to the local homeschool kids from our co-op. I’ve known these kids for ten years and have taught many of them in numerous classes now. What would I speak about? All the years I’ve known them? The various challenges they’ve overcome? Their collective adorableness?

It didn’t take long, though, for me to realize that what I wanted to tell them had to do with the future, not the past. I want them to risk. Home education is often as much shelter as anything else. Parents want their children to make fewer mistakes than they made. We want them to be free of the oppression of bad choices, and danger, and the regrets many of us harbor. So we keep them home, we guide their education, we supervise their friendships, we are selective about their extra-curricular activities.

And then we send them out into the world of college and adult life… and hope for the best. What is that ‘best’? It seems to me that the young 20’s are a rare moment in a lifetime. Big enough to drive, fly, drink in Europe, vote in America, volunteer in orphanages; unfettered by spouses or babies or home mortgages or careers or health problems. These “big kids, now grown-ups” can do stuff that they will never forget, that will shape their values for the rest of their lives.

Spending a year in France as an exchange student changed the course of my life. Not only did I learn to speak a foreign language fluently, but I was drawn to French speaking Africa for my early career. I’ve had an interest in and heart for the developing world ever since. I feel a kinship with issues and revolutions worlds away from Ohio just because I spent time living first in France and then in Central Africa, followed by time in Morocco.

I discovered the difference between first world “take it for granted” infrastructure and developing world hardships. I learned how to rely on myself in sticky situations without a mommy or daddy to bail me out. I found out that there are many ways to eat breakfast, or drink coffee, or flush toilets, or shower, or shop for vegetables, or dress modestly. I realized that my way (my familiar, seems-right-to-me way) wasn’t the only way, wasn’t the “morally clear, ethically superior, most efficient” way just because I am American.

Spending time in the Peace Corps or living in a foreign country as a volunteer, or student gives your young adults a view of the world that can’t be gotten from TV, newspaper articles, big budget movies or National Geographic, no matter how open minded. The best teacher isn’t information, it’s encounter. Once your kids are old enough to drive, they are old enough to begin that journey toward risk and adventure that will shape them for the rest of their lives.

Encourage them to dream of bigger vistas, send them to places they have never been, trust them to discover riches and ideas and empathies that you can’t yet imagine. This is the objective of home education: give them a firm foundation to stand on, and wings for flight.

I’ll be out of town traipsing up the steps of the Notre Dame, eating almond croissants and hanging around the Universite Catholique (where Johannah attends) over the weekend. See you on the flip!

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, College, Family Notes, Tips for Teen Writers | 2 Comments »

Email: After the convention…

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Welcome new Brave Writer readers. I so enjoyed meeting many of you at the convention last weekend. I received the following wonderful email on Sunday and want to share it with you. It tickles me no end when someone puts into practice the ideas I share so effectively and quickly! Hope it encourages you too.

–

Julie,

My name is Kari McGrath. I sat in on three of your sessions with my friend this past weekend, and ended up buying your book, and I just can’t wait to get started! I have told every friend I’ve run into that homeschools, and I shared last night with my husband, who thought it sounded great. Unfortunately, I got sick at the convention and lost my voice (now you might remember me!), so I stayed home today from church, and my oldest daughter stayed home with me. I was so excited, I told her about this new writing program we are going to be doing, how it will be fun, and I don’t think we’ll cry anymore! I know you talked about “Freewrite Fridays” and said that it would work Mon-Thurs…well, I have to let you know it will work on a Sunday, too! I just had to share this with you.

After I told her today what we’d be doing (freewriting), I couldn’t wait! So, she and I went into the kitchen, got our paper and pencils. I told her what we were going to do, and told her I was setting the timer for 3 minutes. She looked scared, so I said, “okay, we’ll write together for one minute!” One minute went by, and she was still writing, so she gave me permission to set it for 2 more minutes. At the end of 3 minutes, I stopped, and she said, “hold on, I still have another sentence to finish!” (This is my daughter who CRIES and gets spankings for her attitude when we write!) We stopped when she was done, then we read ours to each other. Here is hers: (note: The first sentence is from Lemony Snickets-when Count Olaf died, the second sentence is from Star Wars, then the rest of the sentences go back to another scene from Lemony Snickets..whose books she LOVED!)

count olaf laid in the water with the helmet in his hands. but master i Just saved your life. As the harpon {harpoon} hit his stomach he flew threw the wall and in to the fountin as he was drowing violet Klaus and sunny ran to the fountin they said they were sorry he drowned.

Ha! It was ALL I could do to not ask why she changed courses from Lemony Snickets to Star Wars and back, but I didn’t!!! I told her it was very good! Then I read her mine. It went:

I love my daughter, Myra. She is a precious gift from God to me. I wanted a child for so many years, and God gave HER to me. I am so thankful He heard my prayers! She is compassionate, kind, a great helper to me, a friend to me. She’s a beautiful girl, but she doesn’t see that. Others do, though-they tell me all the time. I don’t know what she’ll do when she grows up, but I think she’ll make a good mother.

I couldn’t get through reading that to her without crying. And, I kept crying. (I think it was half love, and half relief that she actually wrote!) She came over and hugged me. I explained that this was all we were going to do-once a week-for the next eight weeks, and then I explained how we’d pick one to revise, etc… Her response? “Aw..just one a week? Can we do more than that? That was alot of fun!!” WHAT???!!! Wow!!! Then she said, “Mom, your ‘poem’ you wrote was really nice…can I keep it?”

All I have to say is, Thank you, Julie! And, I haven’t even started reading ‘the jungle’ yet! Ha!

God bless,
Kari McGrath, Kentucky

–
And that’s how it’s done!

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Email, Friday Freewrite, Young Writers | 2 Comments »

What you can do when you want to give up?

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

It’s April. Spring break is just around the corner, and happens to come at the right time every year (the moment when I want to collapse from the drain of winter quarter)… except for one thing. Sometimes when I allow myself to let down during the break, I lose all my energy to finish the year strong. Our homeschool dribbles to the end of May and ekes into June with just enough sluggish energy to feel we have completed the year’s work. Or in those “let’s just hurry up and get to summer” years, the dribbling and eking maybe didn’t even occur and we hope no one from the state shows up at our door in July looking for work samples from seven subjects.

I used to put it this way: in the fall, I was a classical educator. In winter, I shifted to a Charlotte Mason-unit study kind of school style. But by spring, radical unschoolers.

If this is you and right now you’re wondering how you can get to the end without the end coming too soon, here are a few Brave Writer suggestions that may help.

  1. Change the routine. Maybe you let everyone sleep in longer than usual and you start the day outside (weather permitting). Start with an entry in a nature journal or tending seedlings you plant. If you usually begin with math, start with grammar. Save math for later in the day. Maybe you can kick a soccer ball before you do any school work at all!  Do something utterly different than you have been. Look at the Brave Writer Lifestyle to trigger ideas.
  2. Get ready the night before. Best piece of advice, hardest to follow. Don’t labor over it. Before bed, pick one thing to use as your centerpiece the next day. It might be a book of poetry, perhaps flowers to plant. Maybe you find a DVD that the kids can enjoy in the afternoon, or you decide to bake brownies so that during read aloud time, there are fresh munchies. Stay simple. Just plan one thing (maybe all you do is stack the school books on the table so they are easily found and no one has to complain that they “can’t find the grammar book”).
  3. Play music. We forget how powerful music is in creating mood. If you’ve got an iPod and a speaker set, put that out the night before. You can throw it on shuffle and let the tunes roll, or you can be more deliberate and create a morning playlist conducive to studying. You might even pick a song (instrumental) to use for either freewriting or free drawing. For freewriting, allow the mood of the music to guide the writing. For free drawing, put a variety of writing elements on the table (markers, crayons, colored pencils, high lighters, pens). Your kids will express the mood of the music as they listen.
  4. Poetry. Perhaps you’re already good at poetry teatimes. If you’re not, this is meant for you. Spring is the perfect time to develop/cultivate the habit of reading poetry, sipping tea and eating treats. Read about it here.
  5. Shakespeare. May is the month of Shakespeare in Brave Writer. Take advantage of the fact that we have already structured into our world a focus you can usurp and use in yours! We have a Shakespeare class for high schoolers available and we offer some suggestions of ways to introduce Shakespeare to your kids in the Brave Writer Lifestyle. The blog will also feature some specifically Shakespeare-y kinds of things to do with your family too.
  6. Take classes. We have good ones. Kidswrite Basic, Kidswrite Intermediate and Literary Analysis start next week. Don’t miss your chance to get these in before the year ends.
  7. Take a day off just for you. Plan a hike in the local hills, go to an art museum alone for a morning, see a movie no one wants to see with you, spend a day wandering a labyrinth, get a massage, get a mani-pedi in bright red. Do something to recharge that takes you away from the burden of daily planning. You deserve it. You’ve been working hard all year.

Bottom line: Each year feels like you re-invent your homeschool. That’s because you do. You’ve got kids changing ages and stages, your income fluctuates, your home routine is up-ended by some sports schedule or dance or acting. You find that what worked one year is just not going to work the next. You’re at the end of one of those years now. What things can you do now, that you may not ever get to do again? What opportunities does this year offer that will vanish come September? Do those now. If that means going to Disneyland while you still have kids under 10, do it. If it means having teatimes outside in your backyard because next year you’ll be living in a condo, have as many as you can. If it means that you have leisurely mornings now but next year will be driving someone to school, enjoy sleeping in and reading together in pajamas these last few weeks.

Whatever phase of life you’re in, savor it. Look ahead and consider today. What can I do today that makes a memory, that preserves what I love, that enhances our well-being? Then do that. Math can wait (unless of course math IS that thing <g>).

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General, Homeschool Advice, Nature Walks, Poetry, Shakespeare, Unschooling | No Comments »

The One Thing Principle

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

I haven’t posted this for awhile, but it’s critical to good home education, good writing practice, good living! Before you read, take a deep breath. Take another. Maybe pour a second cup of tea. Did you know that you are more likely to feel successful in homeschooling if you do one thing really well today (invest in it, spend energy on it)? If you let other things go and are fully present for one thing, you’ll feel like you got a lot done. Conversely, if you do a whole bunch of things in a hurry, covering all the material, you will feel discouraged like you didn’t get enough done.

Depth, not breadth, creates momentum in the homeschool. Here’s how you can shift gears to doing one thing at a time… well.

–

The discussion of how to create a flexible routine as well as how to create a home context conducive to nurturing relationships prompts me to revisit a plank of the Brave Writer philosophy: The One Thing Principle. Some of you already know it well. Others of you are new to Brave Writer so this will help you begin to shift the paradigm from which you teach and guide your kids. Remember: we are home educators. We are not recreating school. One of the biggest advantages to being at home is the ability to go in-depth when studying or pursuing an interest. This is the key principle to help you do just that guilt free. Enjoy!

–

When was the last time you really tasted the food you ate? If you’re like me and millions of moms, you wolf down your meals in an attempt to clean your plate before someone in the family needs seconds, needs a face-wiped, needs to be breastfed, needs you on the phone.

It’s easy to run through the homeschool day the same way - Everyone’s doing math. Good. In just ten minutes I’ll get the older two started on spelling. While they’re spelling, I’ll read with the eight-year-old and nurse the baby. Then I’ll make lunch and think about which creative project will go with the history novel.

As you race along, you might even have the strange feeling of not having done anything worthwhile, even though you are exhausted and have been pushing the family at breakneck speed. There’s a sense in which we “hover” above our lives rather than living right inside them when we’re filled with obligations, good ideas, lots of children and the endless demands of email and phone calls that intrude on our best plans.

(more…)

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, One Thing | 7 Comments »

Friday Hodgepodge

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Freewrite prompt: What is the best birthday present you could receive?

I’m out of town for the weekend to go to the Indiana Homeschool Support Convention. I’ll be in New Paris, IN.

On Monday, we have our Spring Class Registration. Be sure to sign up early, if you are concerned about getting into a class. We filled every one in winter quarter and some were filled within days of registration opening. We’ll keep registration open until a class fills.

Last thing: keep trucking! I’m getting a lot of email lately from moms worried about teens who are late in developing their writing skills. Not to worry! If you start over (take me seriously on this - go back to the very beginning, a very good place to start), you’ll find that your smart teen who is simply a damaged writer, will rebound and develop at a much faster rate than your younger kids. You can start at age 16 and get all the way to college prep by 18 if you address the fact that your teen has been damaged by the programs you’ve used to date. If you take his or her writing voice seriously, you can re-boot the system and help your teen unclog the passage through which his or her words will flow.

Start with Kidswrite Basic. It will change how both of you see writing and will put you in the right space to be that coach and ally for the rest of your teen’s academic career at home.

I’ll check in over the weekend, if I can get some computer access. Have a great Spring Forward (clocks change on Saturday night!). Hurray for sunshine and temps over 60!

Posted in BW products, Brave Writer Philosophy, Tips for Teen Writers | No Comments »

New to Brave Writer

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Brave Writer has three components to support your writing and language arts goals:

Home Study Courses

Online Classes

Language Arts Programs

The Home Study Courses are divided into two. The Writer’s Jungle teaches you, the parent, how to be the most effective writing coach in your children’s lives. The principles, exercises, and guidelines apply to every level of writing from beginner to pro. If you like to work at your own pace, need a manual to which you can refer when you get overwhelmed, if you benefit from having your entire philosophy of writing stood on its head and recreated for you, then start with The Writer’s Jungle. It will work for all your kids.

Help for High School is our home study course for teens. It’s written to your student and is intended to be self-teaching. The course is organized around specific modules and in each module, there is an exercise or writing assignment to complete. These can be done multiple times if you swap topics. They are writing processes, not specific assignments geared toward a period in history or a work of literature. Help for High School provides models of how to write expository essays (both open and closed forms) as well as the steps necessary to understand the structure of argument, thesis and points and particulars.

The Online Classes provide moms and kids with instructor support and accountability. They cover a wider range of choices in terms of specific writing genres. If you prefer to be in a classroom style setting with an instructor, other students and the gentle accountability of due dates, start with Kidswrite Basic. This online course transforms your understanding of how to best facilitate writing in your home. It gives you the tools to know how to encourage and foster good writing habits rather than merely editing poor writing for mechanical errors.

Kidswrite Intermediate is the course to consider if you want to make the transition from parent-led writing to student-led. It’s designed for kids just on the cusp of essay writing. The processes in KWI make up the first half of Help for High School. The benefit to taking it as a class is that the online class offers instructor feedback and the opportunity to read other student writing. KWI prepares students for all levels of essay classes, as well.

The other online classes round out writing experiences. We offer fiction, literary analysis, poetry, grammar, freewriting, SAT/ACT preparation, Shakespeare, literary discussion (Boomerang Complete) and more. The courses help you and your kids to widen their writing experiences while giving you the support and modeling that make you a more and more effective writing coach. The courses also prevent a feeling of isolation in the homeschool, putting you in touch with other parents and students from around the world who are embarking on a similar journey.

The language arts portion of Brave Writer supports and enhances the writing programs. The Arrow, the Boomerang and the retired Slingshot are designed to provide you with easy-to-use tools that teach mechanics, spelling, grammar, handwriting and literary elements in the context of great literature. The Arrow works best for kids 3rd - 6th grades. The Boomerang is designed for 7th-9th grades (though some high school students do quite well with the Boomerang). The Slingshot (already published issues) catered to 10th-12th grades. We now offer literary analysis classes for 10th-12th grades instead.

You can either subscribe to the current year’s lists of the Arrow or Boomerang (paying monthly on your credit card), or you can purchase already published issues ala carte and design your own year’s program around books you and your kids want to read. These tools are meant to supplement your writing program, not replace it. When the Arrow or Boomerang are used in tandem with The Writer’s Jungle or Help for High School, or along with Kidswrite Basic or Kidswrite Intermediate, you will be offering your children a complete language arts/writing package.

Jump in. Try not to figure it all out or become overwhelmed at the choices. Pick one thing that you find fascinating. Purchase it or sign up for it. Use it, do it. Experience and enjoy it. See how it goes. Then do the next thing. As you take it one thing at a time, you will build momentum. You’re not in a rush. You don’t have to solve writing and language arts this week, this semester or even this year. You only need to take the next logical step toward the goal of becoming the best writing coach you can be. In turn, your kids will grow into more and more effective writers.

Posted in Arrow, BW products, Boomerang, Brave Writer Philosophy, Help for High School, Homeschool Advice, The Writer's Jungle, Tips for Teen Writers, Young Writers | 2 Comments »

Writing through the tears

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Who can do anything well while crying?

Can you type while crying? Make dinner? Have sex? Probably not.

Tears are an indication that something is dreadfully wrong. They signal pain:  emotional or physical. In writing, emotional pain may be writer’s block or fear of making a mistake. Physical pain may be that the hand hurts from squeezing the pencil too tightly, or eye strain, or physical exhaustion from a poor night’s sleep. Crying is not a sign of laziness or lack of character. Crying is the last release, the final “giving up” and admission of failure. Crying signals: I need comfort.

When the tears come, the writing’s done.

Take a break. Acknowledge your child’s feelings: I see that you’re unhappy. Let’s talk about this later. Offer a hug.

Later, come back to your child and find out what’s going on. Ask:

Are you afraid of making a mistake?

Is it too hard to grip the pencil for ten minutes straight?

Are you having a hard time spelling?

Do you wish you could play outside in the sunshine rather than sit at a table?

Does it feel like you have nothing to say?

Are you sleepy? Hungry?

Be an investigator and a comforter. A cup of tea and eye contact will go a long way toward soothing the hurting writer. Remember, writer’s block is the usual reason for writing paralysis (not strong wills or sinful natures). Writer’s block means the child doesn’t have access to the words inside. The words are hidden behind anxiety, fear of failure, or a vague sense of the topic (not enough depth in the topic to be able to talk about it meaningfully in writing).

Writer’s block is experienced by everyone (pros, professors and prodigies) and at its most acute, produces tears. So give oodles of empathy, hugs, and comfort foods. Then talk about how to make writing less painful. Take some time to remind yourself of the goal - a free, brave writer who is at ease when writing, not gripped with anxiety and fear.

Julie

P.S. If you find it hard to know how to get beyond the tears and writer’s block, peruse my website and the archives of this blog for ideas. I also devote a good chunk of The Writer’s Jungle to this subject as well.

Freewriting is one of our favorite tactics for unblocking stuck writers. Another idea is to stop writing all together for awhile and work on building a relationship where talking freely and well is cultivated. That means, of course, that you will seek opportunities to drive your kid to his destinations so that you can chat the whole way, drawing him out, listening to what he knows lots about and encouraging him to share as much as he can as well as he can… so he’ll grow in verbal self-expression.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, The Writer's Jungle, Writing Exercises, Young Writers | No Comments »

You gotta be home to homeschool

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

There are two kinds of “being home” that I want to explore in the blog. Today’s post focuses on the physical choice to be “home” more than away. For families with young kids (particularly if you’ve got kids under 12), cultivate a home life, in your house. For families with teens, be choosy. Outside activities are important, but consolidate when you can. If you’re in that awkward phase of life where you have some of each (little kids and big ones), your choices have to be that much more creative and deliberate. I’ve got a special section just for you further down.

The second kind of “being home” has to do with attitude—how do we treat each other when we are home as opposed to away? What does it look like/feel like to be educated in a home? We’ll look at “home” as a way of being tomorrow.

Choosing to be at home:

The first step in creating a better homeschool environment is to be home. Long stretches of time that go uninterrupted by orthodontists, trips to the tutor, vet appointments for the dog and shopping for food are essential to create a feeling of time and space to learn. One of the best bits of advice I received early on is to not make my doctor or dental appointments in the mornings. Just because I’m “home” doesn’t mean I’m free! If my kids were in a school building, I wouldn’t want to take them out for a check up. I’d wait until the afternoon. Likewise, my time at home is full and therefore I’m not available for appointments before noon, either. Better to schedule all such meetings after lunch. (If you have napping kids, then you have to wait until naps are done or let them nap in the car or stroller.)

Additionally, limit outside activities. We had a rule in our family of five kids that only two kids could be playing on a sports team at any given time. That meant that some of our kids couldn’t do their sport year-round. We had no prodigies so I didn’t have to weigh the merits of possible college scholarships against my decision for sane living, so your mileage may vary. But we discovered early on we could only support two weekend games and two sets of practices per week, per season. The same could be said for musical instruments, tutorials, co-ops, dance lessons and so on. When you have lots of kids, this becomes even more important. You do not want your youngest children to spend their early childhoods sipping Juicy Juice boxes in a car seat watching DVDs in the back of the van while they are schlepped along with hockey pads to the next practice!

Hire people who will come to you or live within walking distance. The midwife I chose on my fifth birth traveled to me to do my check-ups. That’s the sole reason I picked her over my previous midwife. When my youngest decided she wanted piano lessons, I sent her across the street. Our piano teacher isn’t my favorite as far as technical skill to teach, but for the early stages, living two minutes from my doorstep outweighed all other concerns. We hired a violin teacher who drove to our house. We also hosted literature discussion groups, writing groups and study sessions so that we could stay home.

Carpool. Do activities that other families do so that you don’t have to do all the driving.

Save some activities until your kids can drive themselves. We didn’t have our kids get jobs outside the home until they could drive themselves. Three of them, however, earned money while at home babysitting and selling cookies in our neighborhood. Neither of these required me to drive anyone anywhere (except when one of them ran out of chocolate chips and forgot to tell me… grrrr!).

Consolidate activities. It’s better to have one long busy day of appointments than to have 30-60 minute trips three or four times per week that interrupt your time at home.

Make one day your inviolable day that you never go anywhere. Once you decide to do this, it will feel nearly impossible to make happen. You’ll find all kinds of reasons you can’t keep this commitment. Of course. Just like dieting or exercise. It’s a discipline. But just as you would clear your schedule to be available weekly for a co-op day, you can do the same in reverse. Make Tuesdays or Fridays (or whatever) the day you never leave the house. You always have the full day at home and are ready for it with good food, a lesson plan, fun TV programming to watch and no pressure to go anywhere. Even if you pull this off three Tuesdays of the month, that’s wonderful! You’ll be amazed at how jealously you guard that day once you commit to it. (Tuesday has traditionally been that day for me since we have co-op on Mondays which is all-day away from home.)

Teens: I’ve shared before that teens need to sense that they are getting out into the big world, evolving into young adults. Home can feel confining, redundant, risk-free. What felt safe and nurturing as a young child becomes confining and tedious past 13. These feelings are normal; they aren’t signs of rebellion or an inability to be happy. I recommend that your teens get involved in something much bigger than they are. One of my Brave Writer students became enamored of low cost, energy efficient housing and built eco-friendly homes in her backyard! Another started a fish breeding farm in the creek neighboring her house. These activities kept these students home, obviously. But home had become a bigger world!

And that’s the point. Home is either the refueling station between community college and aiding at the local elementary school three days a week, or it’s the means to pursuing a dream (writing a novel, inventing a language, crafting a quilt, remodeling the basement).

In our family, two of our teens joined a Shakespeare company that met downtown with professional actors and a wide variety of students once a week on the weekends with performances at the end of the year. I know teens who’ve gone on mission trips, have built computers from scratch, are on high level sports teams, acted in plays, started parttime high school or junior college, worked for the first time, gone to art institutes, joined community or high school music programs, written for publication, and started businesses. Doing written narrations by themselves at the kitchen table is not enough for a teen’s education. Supervising the small children in the family is not a teen’s daily responsibility. We had the babies; they didn’t.

Teens need driver’s licenses and money. They need peers and challenges. And they need a home. That home is their anchor. They tack between feeling bold and anxious, mature and needing a mommy. Home is the place where they can suck their thumbs, curl up and recharge. Each teen is different so remember that some need more down time than others. You can monitor this by evaluating how well they manage emotionally. Paring down the outside activities can be one way to help them reconnect to themselves. But be cautious here. Sometimes we moms imagine they will be happier with less, when what they crave and need is more. Teens have a remarkable capacity to juggle many demands and some need that stimulation to become the competent people they want to be.

So what do you do if you have teens needing adventure and little kids needing a stable home routine? This is the trickiest period, but it’s important to be intentional. There are a couple ways to help your teens get out without sacrificing the little kids in the process (and there are ways to keep a nice, vibrant home life without forcing teens to sit home all day). Try some of these ideas and see how they work for you.

  1. Commit to one big “out of the house” project for your teen. Support one big project (Shakespeare, biology class, refurbishing a car, All Star soccer). Pay for it, help get the teen to that project, show up for performances or whatever is required. Then, above that one big project, put the responsibility on your teen to make the other stuff happen. That means if it requires money, they earn it. If it requires rides, they coordinate (create the car-pooling, or drive themselves, or work it out with you so that it doesn’t interfere with your routine with the younger kids). They take responsibility for making the stuff they want… happen. That’s part of adventure, responsibility and risk. They choose to make their lives more interesting, richer.
  2. Find one big project to work on at home. This can be as sophisticated as constructing a language (I have one kid who did this) or as simple as becoming really good at World of Warcraft. It’s great if your teens have a goal that can be pursued at home: watching all the top AFI films, writing a novel, studying art history, planting a vegetable garden, rebuilding the engine of a car, building a website, learning photography. School work (the stuff that goes on the transcript) is necessary, but if it’s all that your teen does at home, home will quickly become a chore rather than a place your teen wants to be.
  3. Protect your mornings. Let your teens know that you need the mornings with your younger kids. That means you will resist being a ride between 8:00 and 11:00 every day. (If a teen needs a ride home from school or something routine like that and it doesn’t take you more than 15 minutes round trip to make it happen, then that’s not unreasonable… but be wary of interruptions that take a half hour or more.)
  4. Triangle in other teen families. It’s sure nice if your daughter and her best friend are both in the play together. Car-pooling! It’s great if a group of kids takes biology together so they can study, ride-share and have friends all at the same time.
  5. Pass home responsibilities down to the younger kids; free your teens to do less at home. Remember when your oldest was 10? You expected a lot (cleaning a bathroom, laundry, setting and clearing the table). But now that your youngest is 10, you still expect the 16 year old to do those chores while the 10 year old seems “too young.” Nonsense. Get your younger kids to do the chores and free the teen to study, have a social life, work a job, and pursue extra-curricular activities. This helps your teen want to be home, too.
  6. Keep a computer in the family room. This enables you to be with your youngers while your teens have a reason to leave their bedrooms.

More ideas? Post them in the comments section.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Family Notes, General, Homeschool Advice, Tips for Teen Writers, Young Writers | 4 Comments »

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