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Cincinnati Homeschool Convention Schedule

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

Hi everyone!

This is the convention schedule for my workshops for those who are coming. I hope to post the audio files some time in April for all of you who can’t attend. For those who can, please stop by my booth (#710) and say hello! I love to hug all my customers.

The schedule and descriptions of each talk follow:

Thursday—8:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Room: Duke 206-208

Nurturing Brave Writers
Working with a reluctant writer? Wanting to inspire a resilient one? This workshop will help you become an effective writing coach and ally to your children through the understanding the writing process. I explore the relationship between how professional writers teach writing and how educators typically instruct students. Then we look at the tactics that work—empowering YOU to sustain and enhance your relationship with your kids while they learn to write.

You’ll also go home with an 8 week writing plan that you can implement right away!

Friday—11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Room: Duke 206-208

The Natural Stages of Growth in Writing
Do you wonder if your child is ready to write on his or her own? How much help should you give a struggling writer? When is the right time to introduce format writing? This workshop offers the homeschooling parent a model for evaluating your child’s current developmental stage in the process of becoming a competent and confident writer. By the end of the workshop, you will have an understanding of how to tailor your children’s writing program into one that suits your child’s skill level while challenging him or her to grow as well.

4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Room: Duke 206-208

Help for High School Writing
When should my student learn to write an essay? Shall I teach the research paper? What if I’ve neglected writing until now? Is it too late? This session deals specifically with all the dynamics of high school writing—the necessary formats, the timing of that instruction, how you can effectively prepare your son or daughter for college and how to evaluate the work they do. Don’t despair! It’s not too late and you are the right person for the job! (And bring your high school students—I’d love to meet them.)

8:30 – 9:30 p.m.
Room: 206-208

Brave Writer Lifestyle
The best way to cultivate writing in your home is to create a context for a language rich environment! We’ll explore the role of nature study, art appreciation, film, poetry, literature, and word play in the development of great writers. Don’t miss this workshop! It will bring the “home” back into your homeschool. Promise!

Saturday: 8:30 – 9:30 a.m.
Room: Duke 206-208

SAT/ACT Essay Preparation
Timed essay writing demands a different kind of skill and preparation than the typical prepared essay. The SAT and ACT essay tests require a student to respond to a prompt sight-unseen in 30 minutes or less. We’ll look at strategies to make these tests less of a beast! Bring your high schoolers with you.

I hope to see many of you there. It’s been a great convention season so far. We have two more to go!

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, BW products | 2 Comments »

Welcome to Brave Writer!

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Home from the second of four conventions, and exhausted! I want to say welcome to all the new members of the Brave Writer family. I hope you’re sipping tea (possibly sneaking a brownie) and clicking through the website to help you orient yourself to a shift in lifestyle.

I’m up to my earlobes in tasks post-convention. Today’s a work day for me. I hope you and your family, conversely, will take a little time to reorient how you spend this week. If it’s sunny where you are, get outside! Take a nature walk and come home to your read aloud time. If it’s still chilly in your part of the country, light a fire and snuggle under blankets while you read. Wherever you are, I hope you’ll look at least one child in the eye and listen intently to what she has to say. Today is a new day! Enjoy your kids!

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General | 2 Comments »

Surprise! No one teaches it.

Monday, November 15th, 2010

In all the writing literature I have crammed between DVDs on my book cases, the one literary element that gets short shrift is: Surprise. I can’t find it—no chapters devoted to expounding its importance. Exercises for plot, dialog, essay format, poetic structure, yes. Surprise? Well, occasionally it gets a passing mention. But almost always it’s tied to some other element (like, powerful verbs should be surprising, or a thesis statement is best constructed in a “surprise reversal” format). But that’s not what I mean. I mean, writing is absolutely dependent on subverting reader expectations over and over and over again, to be considered powerful.

Surprise means bursting through the door unannounced with cookies and milk, just for the reader, right when energy flags and minds wander. I’m not talking about big plot twists or even hiding information only to reveal it later. I also mean surprising the reader with a fresh metaphor; casting a commonly known term into a new grammatical role; picking unusual proper nouns for characters, street signs, shops; starting the story in the middle of the action; saving your best argument for last in an essay; hooking the reader’s attention at the top of the paper and saving the resolution for the conclusion (hook and return); littering the writing with alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme and consonance… and so on.

The best writing is as dependent on generously ladled portions of surprise throughout its lasagna layers of meaning, imagery, cool logic and vivid language as middle-aged readers are on good lighting and corrective lenses!

What’s more, it can be taught! Part of what makes your young writers’ quirky, poorly spelled and punctuated early attempts at written communication so enjoyable is the way their view of the world surprises your jaded, middle-aged one. You “crack up” when they surprise you.

It’s not hard to be surprising, once you know where to hide before you pop out!

Let’s take a look at this mysterious little element and introduce our kids to it. (Psst! They love surprises, so this may be your own subversive way to get them from the couch to the kitchen table, too!)

The “personal experience metaphor” trick
The hardest thing to do is to create fresh comparisons (metaphors, similes, analogies). Readers are sick of the “tried and true,” “old as the hills,” “dry as toast,” cliches that have served since the Spanish-American war! To wake up your readers, take an old cliche and buy it a new outfit. Draw from contemporary experiences that are alive to your kids.

Example: Her body twisted and flipped like Play-Doh in the hands of my baby brother.

Example: He focused his attention like a gamer trying to find the secret passage on level 6 of Mario.

Example: My Mom is older than an Atari play station.

Example: The early bird may catch the worm, but in my house, the early homeschooler catches up on math left unfinished from the day before.

The “grammatical transformation” trick
When I say, “What part of speech is ‘couch’?”; you think ‘noun’.” Right? How about this: “Don’t couch your words in flattery when you talk to me, mister!” Suddenly this ho-hum noun takes charge of the whole sentence (and the offending party!). If you flip the grammatical use of a few words, on a regular basis, you keep your reader vertical and awake! Not only that, habitual meanings can be subverted by using verbs and nouns in unusual pairings. “Dinosaurs marinate in the earth.” Do they? Well, yeah, kinda! It makes you pause and reconsider your internal vision.

Example: Drew lego-ed the sticks together into a kind of backyard fort.

Example: The birds pinwheeled through the autumn sky.

Example: The solution became a schmear of peanut-buttering one side of the argument while jellying the other, until the two competing options were slammed together into a single sticky whole.

The “collecting crazy names” trick
Get a moleskin notebook—the kind that fits in a pocket, or a purse. When you’re driving around, pay attention to signs. Jot down interesting names. Look at billboards, freeway exits, stores and hotels. Record terms that will serve as good choices for your writing. Names of people can be gathered from Greek myths, the Norse Gods, fiction you are reading, TV shows, cartoons, comic books, Shakespeare plays, a directory of your homeschooling community. It really doesn’t matter how you gather them, but pay attention and collect when you are not writing. Then when you need one, pull it out!

An expert in the field of surprising name choices is none other than J.K. Rowling. Whatever you think about her books, her use of creative names is unmatched. She tells her readers she’s been keeping a little notebook for more than a decade where she jots interesting names to be used at a later date. When she’d create a new character, she’d flip through her book looking for the right name.

Example: There’s a reason Rowling has “Hermoine” paired with Harry and Ron. Much more interesting than “Mary” might have been.

Example: Shakespeare has great names like “Hero,” “Benedick,” “Ophelia,” and “Iago.”

Example: The Greek myths include epic names: “Persephone,” “Demeter,” “Agamemnon,” “Xanthe” and “Kallisto.”

This hunt for a good name applies not only to people, but to stores, cities, street signs, organizations, tournaments—all fiction depends on a slew of proper nouns carefully selected.

Example: Diagon Alley (play on words: diagonally)

Example: Island of the Blue Dolphins (using a Native American name)

Example: Camp Kooskooskoos (Trumpet of the Swan: funny to say)

So join the game! Make “naming” a joy, not a chore.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Language Arts, Literary elements, Words!, Writing Exercises, Young Writers | 4 Comments »

What it means to be “brave”

Monday, September 20th, 2010

Hello everyone!

Summer is long over. However, fall is just beginning in the Bogart household. My middle child only moved to college on Thursday! Made it very hard to settle into a fall routine.

Now that we’re here, let’s explore a few thoughts about Brave Writer and writing that may support your coming school year. One of our Brave Writer moms said it well a few years back:

I saw the name “Brave Writer” and honestly didn’t even consider why the website was called that. After reading what a friend had to say about The Writers Jungle on the Sonlight forums, I decided to check it out. At first I thought…no, way…the price is too much! Boy was I wrong! It has been one of the most valuable investments I have made on this homeschool journey.

Last week I finally realized the significance of the name “Brave Writer.” It speaks not only to the bravery of putting your thoughts down on paper, but also to me as a homeschool mom. I have been using several recommended curriculum including a spelling workbook. It has gone fine—my ds 8 has been getting great grades on the tests as well as learning some alphabatizing and proofreading skills. However, when he writes, he misspells some of those same words. There is a disconnect with my ds between completing a workbook and memorizing a list of spelling words and actually being able to spell well. Another downside…the spelling workbook pages were taking way too long some days with a dawdling boy (but who could blame the kid! It’s not the most fascinating work!). And that’s when I did my first brave thing…I threw out the spelling workbook (gasp, and the $10 I had paid for it).

O.K…that may not seem that brave, but it was my security blanket! And now I am having these crazy thoughts concerning the Grammar book as well. You see, I want him to spend more time on copywork, dictation, narrations, reading great books and poetry and there are just so many hours in the day (especially productive hours where an 8 year boy is involoved).

I’m having trouble letting go of those nagging thoughts “Well, so-and-so is having her ds do the whole grammar book and talks about how much he is learning…what if we don’t? Will he still get into a good college someday? What if he can’t diagram a sentence?” (As I write this, I realize just how silly that sounds, but deep down I still wonder).

So I’m starting with my first brave act…I’m throwing out the spelling workbook and trying a more natural approach using copywork and dictation. Maybe soon I’ll be able to take the next brave step with a little encouragement!

Kay

By the way, my ds doesn’t hate to write now that we do freewriting. I never realized how much pressure he was feeling because he thought everything had to be perfect! Thanks, Julie!

What a great story! It’s true that being brave is not just about writing. It’s about taking calculated risks to trust that writing can be as natural a process as learning to speak was. Kay’s journey can be yours! Every day I hear from families who have completed the homeschooling journey. Here are a couple of their comments:

Hi Julie

We’ve been with Brave Writer for many years: have won a competition, participated in an on-line class, and my daughter is still loving her writing. She’s 17 now…

We’ve loved your stuff and continue to recommend your services to people everywhere we go.

God bless,
Anna
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I thoroughly appreciated your blog, bravewriter manual and especially the “tuesday teatime” idea. We have enjoyed poetry with chocolate cake and have good memories for that. You helped me approach an area I did not have confidence in so THANK YOU.

Jenny
–
Dear Julie,

As a homeschool family, we have been so blessed by you. I just want to thank you so much for what you have done for our family, over the past few years of our subscription.

As you know, children grow up. Our two are at the end of their homeschool journey, and we are using less and less homeschool curriculum, and more and more of community based learning prorams.

We have all ( me too) enjoyed the bravewriter lifestyle, and will always cherish special memories of reading aloud, and poems with our afternoon tea and candles. You are such a huge blessing.

Thank you for everything.

Sincerely,
Beverley

It’s great to be a part of these journeys. Hope Brave Writer can help you too!

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, BW products, Dictation and copywork, Email, Friday Freewrite, Grammar, Homeschool Advice | No Comments »

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.

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.
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”).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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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!

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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.

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Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, One Thing | 8 Comments »

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