How have you been brave this year? (Hint: get your moms to freewrite with you and tell them to enter the contest.)
Archive for June, 2006
Writing Contest for Moms
Are you brave yet?
Time for some fun. Kids are at the pool or shut up indoors with the X Box, and you finally have a few minutes to rub together for yourself.
Put those minutes to work for you.
This June, in honor of the new edition of The Writer’s Jungle (which will be out third week in June), Brave Writer is holding a writing contest for moms. There will be three winners: Grand Prize, and two runners-up.
The Grand Prize winner will either win Help for High School and a one year subscription to the Slingshot, or the new Writer’s Jungle (your choice). (If you already have these, we’ll offer you some equivalent in Brave Writer materials or classes.)
The runners’ up will receive $25.00 gift certificates to any Brave Writer materials (classes not included).
Before you decide that you’re not a writer and can’t possibly win, I want you to think about entering this competition anyway. This is a chance for you to write under pressure, to a deadline, drawing on all the skills you are teaching your kids. You’ll get to experience first-hand what it takes to create, what it feels like to know that your writing will be read and evaluated, and you’ll have the joy and exhilaration of defeating that anxiety about writing that you have well-concealed under your cool exterior. 🙂
Also, I’m not looking for the most professional piece, but the essays that show me that the writer is stretching, risking… in short, being brave! Ask your kids for help. They’ll love the chance to edit your work, and to give you ideas and feedback.
Guidelines
- Write a 700 word essay that uses Brave Writer principles (literary elements, opening hook, satisfying conclusion, alliteration, telling the true truth, and so on) that answers the following question:
Write about a time in the last year that you were brave. The experience doesn’t have to relate to homeschooling or writing or parenting. It might be your first time sky-diving, or the time you confronted your mother-in-law for meddling in your family’s business. The essay can be humorous or serious, and you may fictionalize some elements for flow, though the original story must be about you (autobiographical).
We’ll post the top five here!
- You may use a pen name for the essay itself, if you don’t want to post your real name on the blog. I will need your real name in the email itself. Include your phone number as well as email address.
- Deadline for entries: Monday, June 26, 2006
- Please send your essay in a Microsoft Word document, attached to your email. If you don’t have Word, then please type the essay into the body of the email itself (no other programs as attachments, please).
I look forward to seeing all the ways you’ve been brave this year!
Julie
While on a walk
Somehow my best educational conversations happen while walking the dog. My son, Liam (11), asked me if I would help him with spelling. This is how it went down:
“Why do you want help with spelling?”
“Because I want to be good at spelling.”
“I thought you were a good speller.”
“Well, not for all words. And plus I don’t know how to use semi-colons.”
“Oh, do you mean punctuation?”
“Yeah, that too.”
“Well for spelling and punctuation, copywork and dictation work best.”
“Well, I won’t do those.”
“Okay, how about we do a spelling bee while throwing a lacrosse ball?”
“Yeah, that would be great.”
“And for punctuation, we could do reverse dictation… how about that?”
“Oh that would be awesome.“
We got home and I started throwing the ball with him calling out words like “convenient” and “loquacious.” He needs no work on spelling, we discovered. 🙂 But he sure enjoyed the challenge!
Then that night, at about 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night, we began reverse dictation (a process by which I type up a passage from a book without any capitals or punctuation and he has to edit/correct the copy). Yes, this is how it works in my house – weekends, middle of the night kind of stuff.
We did two passages together from Harry Potter and he so enjoyed them, he is begging to do more. We covered more grammar and punctuation during his hour of real interest and enthusiasm than we have in the last four years of home education.
Finally I had to ask. “Why the sudden interest?”
“Well, my online gaming community did a recent survey and found out that only 49% of the users spell correctly most of the time. I want to start spelling right. And no one uses punctuation, but it seems like a good idea.”
And there you go. I swear this child’s entire education is coming from computer games. 🙂
Friday Freewrite: Doing a good job
When do you feel proud?
Since we are at the end of the school year in the northern hemisphere, it seems a good time to look back and write about something you did well, something you are proud of. 🙂
