Brave Writer News: June 2026

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[Podcast #345] DIY Writing Retreats for Kids

Brave Writer Podcast

What if a writing retreat didn’t require a plane ticket to Ireland?

This week on the Brave Writer podcast, we explore what makes writing feel spacious, playful, and alive. From Julie’s memoir retreat on the Irish Sea to Melissa’s fiction experiments with point of view, we talk about how atmosphere, community, sensory detail, and low-stakes exploration can help writers of every age drop beneath the noise of daily life.

We also share practical ways to create a mini writing retreat at home for your kids, complete with snacks, freedom, feedback, and delight.

Join us as we reimagine writing as nourishment for the intellect and the spirit.

Show Notes

Create a Writing Retreat at Home

A writing retreat sounds luxurious, doesn’t it?

A lodge on the Irish Sea. Waves rolling in all night. Tea, notebooks, quiet mornings, and a room full of writers listening deeply to one another’s words.

Most of us are not packing for Ireland this summer. We have laundry to fold, meals to make, camps to drive to, toddlers to supervise, teens to text, and a dog who needs to go out again.

Still, the heart of a writing retreat is available to us.

A retreat is not magic because of the location. The location helps, of course. Beauty and quiet give the nervous system a chance to settle. But the real gift of a retreat is that it creates permission. Permission to slow down. Permission to notice. Permission to write without producing anything useful right away.

That kind of permission can happen at your kitchen table.

Start with safety.

Tell your kids that this is not a grammar day. No red pens. No grades. No “fixing.” Writing retreat writing is exploratory writing. We are playing with language the way we play with Legos. Dump the pieces out. Build something strange. Take it apart. Try again.

Then make it feel different from school. Light a candle. Put out snacks. Make tea or lemonade. Invite a few friends. Write outside under a tree. Bring clipboards to the porch. Let someone write under the table if that helps. Change the atmosphere, and you change the body’s expectations.

Instead of assigning a finished piece, offer experiments.

  • Write a memory in past tense. Then, the next day, write the same memory in present tense. Notice what changes. Does the scene feel more immediate? More chaotic? More visual?
  • Write a story from the hero’s point of view. Then write it from the villain’s. What does the “bad guy” notice that the hero missed?
  • Choose one object, like a baseball glove, a mixing bowl, a shell, a button, a pinecone. Look at it longer than seems necessary. Smell it. Touch it. Turn it over. Let the object reveal its personality. The physical world is often where metaphor begins.
  • Try a proverb prompt. Gather a handful of familiar sayings: “The early bird catches the worm,” “A watched pot never boils,” “Many hands make light work.” Ask your child to choose one and freewrite a real-life memory that somehow brushes against its meaning.

Most importantly, make sharing optional.

Writing is vulnerable. Even experienced writers can shake when reading personal work aloud. Children may cry, freeze, get silly, or collapse into giggles. Those responses are not misbehavior. They are the body’s way of handling the strange power of seeing private experience turned into words.

When kids do share, ask listeners to notice what they loved. A funny phrase. A surprising image. A sound pattern. A moment that made them lean in. Let feedback begin with delight.

A writing retreat at home does not need to last a week. It can be one morning. One afternoon. One picnic blanket and a notebook.

What matters is the shift: writing is not always a performance. Sometimes writing is a place to enter. A place to discover what we think, what we remember, what we feel, and what we have to say.

That is nourishment. That is the writing life.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

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Using Literature to Teach Language Arts

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Brave Writer’s literature-based programs offer a gentle, seamless way to build strong writing skills!

Watch the replay below of a recent “How to Use Literature to Teach Writing” webinar with Brave Writer president, Dawn Smith. It is jam-packed with information to help you be successful this coming school year, in addition to helping you understand Brave Writer materials.

Resources

Brave Writer

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Adding Rather Than Taking Away

Brave Writer

One idea that surfaced recently during our Brave Learner Home “Go Analog” webinar was to focus on adding rather than taking away. Let me explain. 

Sometimes, when something worries us, like too much screen time, we think about reducing it in terms of taking something away. Reduce screen time by removing access to screen-based activities. There is certainly a time for that. But a helpful reframe is to reduce by adding.

Remember when I shared that instead of thinking of life as busy, I like to think of it as full? What if you helped fill your child’s day with engaging activities that naturally pull them off screens?

Ask yourself:

  • What is one thing I loved doing as a child that had nothing to do with a screen? How could I invite my child into a similar experience this summer?
  • If our family had a whole afternoon with nothing planned and no screens, what would we actually want to do? Invite your children into this reflection with you.
  • Where do I see my kids feeling the most restless, bored, or dependent on screens? How could an “analog bag” (filled with items like colorful pens, washi tape, rubber stamps, and ink pads) gently stretch them to embrace the discomfort of getting off of technology for a moment? 

Keep in mind that the goal is achieved by adding, not taking away, which can often feel like a punishment. 

Today’s post features an encouraging message by Dawn Smith (President of Brave Writer) that she recently shared with our Brave Learner Home community.

Brave Learner Home

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