February 2015 - A Brave Writer's Life in Brief A Brave Writer's Life in Brief
  • Start Here
    • For Families
      Multiple Ages
    • Ages 5-7
      Beginning Writers
    • Ages 8-10
      Emerging Writers
    • Ages 11-12
      Middle School Writers
    • Ages 13-14
      High School Writers
    • Ages 15-18
      College Prep Writers
  • Digital Products
    • Core Products
    • Bundles
    • Literature Singles
    • Practice Pages
    • Homeschool Help
    • Special Offers
  • Online Classes
    • Class Descriptions
    • Class Schedule
    • Classroom
    • How Our Classes Work
    • Our Writing Coaches
    • Classes FAQ
  • Community
    • Brave Learner Home
    • Blog
    • Podcast
    • Calendar
    • Brave Writer's Day Off
  • Cart
  • My Account
    • My Online Classes
    • My Account
  • My Account
    • My Online Classes
    • My Account
  • Start Here

    If you’re new to Brave Writer, or are looking for the best products for your child or family, choose from below:

    • For Families
      Multiple Ages
    • Ages 5-7
      Beginning Writers
    • Ages 8-10
      Emerging Writers
    • Ages 11-12
      Middle School Writers
    • Ages 13-14
      High School Writers
    • Ages 15-18
      College Prep Writers
  • Digital Products

    If you’re already familiar with Brave Writer products, go directly to what you’re looking for:

    • Core Products
    • Bundles
    • Literature Singles
    • Practice Pages
    • Homeschool Help
    • Special Offers
  • Online Classes
    • Class Descriptions
    • Class Schedule
    • Classroom
    • How Our Classes Work
    • Our Writing Coaches
    • Classes FAQ
  • Community
    • Brave Learner Home
    • Blog
    • Podcast
    • Calendar
    • Brave Writer's Day Off
  • Search
  • Cart

Search Bravewriter.com

  • Home
  • Blog

A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Thoughts from my home to yours

Archive for February, 2015

« Older Entries

Friday Freewrite: Dogs and cats (and llamas!!)

Dogs_cats_llamas_freewrite

This writing prompt was originally going to focus only on our canine and feline friends, but in light of the “llama  drama” yesterday…

Imagine that the dogs (and the llamas!!) are upset because they can’t roam as freely as many cats can.

For instance, the law in Ohio states that dogs must be “physically confined or restrained or properly leashed and controlled by a person, except in cases where the dog is hunting with its owner or keeper.”

But, it’s not always the same for cats (see section II. D.)

Now imagine you’re a dog (or a llama!!) and write down the arguments you might use to show that you deserve the same freedom as cats.

Then imagine you’re a cat and share reasons why it’s purrfectly fine to have different laws for cats and dogs (and llamas!!).

New to freewriting? Check out our online guide.

Images by Dave Fayram, KamrenB Photography, Jeff Turner (cc cropped, tinted)

Posted in Friday Freewrite | Comments Off on Friday Freewrite: Dogs and cats (and llamas!!)

You Have Time to Prepare

You have time to prepare

Do you remember how to divide fractions? I didn’t. I had a 4th grade math book whose page I turned and discovered, “Oops! We are up to division of fractions. I can’t remember how to do that.”

I whisked myself away to the garage to teach myself. My kids made messes in the living room.

I returned ready to show Noah how to divide fractions. He performed the task easily. At the end of the page, he commented, “So I don’t have to really remember this? I won’t need fractions as an adult? I only need to know them for today, right?”

Ha! He took a different lesson than the one I meant to impart. My inability to remember how to divide fractions stood out, naked and then ashamed. I countered that my handicaps in math were just that—skills I didn’t get to use when I needed them. I hoped for better for him, and I told him that I would do a better job of preparing to be his teacher in the future.

It’s with this experience in mind that I make the following recommendation. It is wise to prepare. In fact, it is essential to learn how to home educate your kids. It is entirely on task to read blogs, Facebook groups, books, and the directions that precede any lesson you expect your kids to complete.

In fact, it is so on task, may I make a bold statement? I know you don’t have time to study “learning” by yourself, in some ideal context of private, quiet, peaceful hours in the day. I know this.

Just Do It

My advice: just do it—right in the middle of the day with kids all around you, “off-task” in dress up clothes, acting out Frozen one more time. Tuck your feet under you, snuggle up to the corner of the sectional, and read, scroll, page. Use headphones if you need to. Highlighter in hand, read. Take notes. Absorb.

It is so much better to let go of today’s and tomorrow’s lessons in order to drill down to the essential ingredients of math or writing, or to understand a period in history, or to get a glimpse of how the science experiment should go and what its objective is, than to muddle forward with doubt and your child’s resistance.

Prepare quoteIt is not better to just “get it done” and hope for the best. There is no “automatic” method for any learning. It just doesn’t happen that way. Depth, immersion, exploration, and guidance are the core values of education.

We are concerned with completion of pages or curricula, and then we worry that our kids aren’t making progress, and we hope for a quick fix—some solution that won’t require us to take valuable time to understand before implementation.

But this approach is backwards. You didn’t go to college (most of you) to get a teaching credential. You’re becoming educators on the fly (even unschoolers are embarking on a huge new project of how to be that parent who facilitates learning or invests deeply in a child’s passions). These choices necessitate information that informs how you spend time with your kids, and what you impart.

You will feel so much better if you have a handle on the contours of a subject area, than if you plod through a book hoping for magic (that the lesson leaps from the page without you knowing why or how it works).

You Have Time

For all the hours you don’t spend in preparation, you will find yourself frustrated with basic problems. Why isn’t my child of 10 spelling well? This is answered quickly in a book that explains the natural stages of growth in writing. 10 year olds don’t spell well. Here’s why, here’s how to foster the continued growth.

Without that bit of knowledge, you will be tempted to push your child or to shame him for not spelling well. I know. I’ve done all of that. I’ve pushed, I’ve shamed, I’ve blamed, I’ve plowed forward in a curriculum expecting it to teach and finding out it did not.

Then a new day dawned. I saw that my home life was fluid—we didn’t have set school hours, we didn’t have a teacher’s lounge for me. We had the mixed up mess of living and learning and all my insecurities about parenting and educating—together in one living room, at one kitchen table. It finally occurred to me: If I was unsure about how to impart a specific skill set for them or share about an area of passion for me, I could spend daytime looking into it. Right when I wanted to.

I wanted my kids to have an art education, but had no idea how to go about it. We spent time in the library where they read books they wanted, and I checked out books about art. I read them. I bought some. I started hanging prints on the wall. Finally, I ordered the 6 video set of Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting. I put them on every day for a couple of weeks, right after breakfast. My kids were free to come and go, but I took notes. They remember this period of our homeschool.

The foundation from that season was laid in me. I couldn’t wait to go to museums with the kids. They were excited to see paintings we’d already viewed in the video series.

I didn’t set out to make this a lesson for them. It was a lesson for me. I didn’t “go to another room” to understand it and then come back with the pretense of “Aha! Here’s the lesson you have to learn now.” Rather, I learned, in front of them.

Did our Sister Wendy odyssey take time away from math? Yes, yes it did.

It also showed me the value of taking time to prepare the feast of ideas I hoped would be my children’s education.

The benefits were life-changing:

  •  To understand—to be prepared.
  • To get behind the lessons to why the lessons.
  • To discover the germ of value in the material.
  • To grow as an educator.
  • To fuel my creativity.
  • To spark my enthusiasm.
  • To feel competent.
  • To hold realistic expectations for each age and subject area.

These are the benefits of preparation. You deserve these benefits. Take the time to get them.

Top image by Pedro Ribeiro Simões (cc cropped)


Brave Learner Home

Posted in Homeschool Advice | Comments Off on You Have Time to Prepare

How to Use a Movie for Dictation Practice

How to Use a Movie for Dictation Practice

Use a favorite scene from a well-loved film for writing dialog from dictation. You should have kids who are already skilled in copywork of dialog first.

Then, try it like this:

  1. Load the DVD, Blu-ray, or streaming platform.
  2. Cue it up for the dialog scene (no more than 2 characters, only back and forth 4-5 times).
  3. Go over basic punctuation conventions for dialog (remind kids how to use quotation marks, that periods and question marks go inside the quotes, that each new speaker starts on a new line, indented, etc.).
  4. Play the scene through.
  5. Then play it a bit at a time, pausing as your children write. Do this for as long as it takes.
  6. Finally, play the scene all the way through, while the child compares their work to what they hear, making adjustments.

You will be the one to correct the finished product, but do it alongside the child in conversation: “Good job here. I think you need an apostrophe for the possessive here. Oops! Changed speakers. What do you do? That’s right. Indent, new line.”

Have fun!


Brave Writer Movie Discussion Club

Top image by Francis Bijl (cc cropped, tinted, text added)

Posted in Wednesday Movies | Comments Off on How to Use a Movie for Dictation Practice

Poetry Teatime: On a Wednesday or a Friday or a Saturday

Poetry Teatime

These clowns LOVE Poetry Tea Time Tuesdays! Sometimes I’ll come downstairs and they’ve set the table and put the kettle on – on a Wednesday, or a Friday or a Saturday! It is the most consistent homeschool routine we have – we love Tuesdays.

As for our choice of poems we ALWAYS read Shel Silverstein – along with a collection of others old and new – I try to pick some that are fitting to the season or month – as for treats – I used to try and make cookies the day before but found that if that didn’t happen we would miss poetry tea time – so now I just buy a package or two of store bought treats! It is also important that the cream goes in the glass creamer – if I try to just put the carton on the table someone always mentions it! We have a candle that usually sits on our dining room table and the oldest rotate turns lighting it.

I used to stress a bit over tea time – wanting it to be perfect – Julie had posted something about this on her blog once – about keeping it simple – so I took her advice to heart and we now enjoy tea time very regularly – sometimes more than once a week!

Thanks for all you guys do over at Brave Writer! Our family sure appreciates you all.

Brenda

Image (cc)

Visit our Poetry Teatime website!

Posted in Poetry Teatime | Comments Off on Poetry Teatime: On a Wednesday or a Friday or a Saturday

Five Magic Words

5 Magic Words to Improve Your Home Environment

Get a dose of at least one of these per day and see if your home environment doesn’t improve.

I’ve provided two possible examples of each one to get your creative juices going. Build from these! Please post your own ideas for how to apply these to your homeschool in the comments section.

1. Surprise

  • A margin note in the math book
  • Cake for breakfast

2. Chance

  • Roll of the dice—numbers represent “how many” of whatever work for the day (number of math problems, number of letters traced, number of pages or sentences or words read…)
  • Flip a coin—heads means working independently for ten minutes; tails means working with a partner for ten minutes (child chooses which subject for independence or partnership)

3. Mystery

  • Handwritten clues leading to a new board game or snack or treat
  • Invisible ink to reveal a new copywork or dictation passage

4. Secret

  • Provide a lock n key diary for secret entries
  • Tell a child a secret plan to spend time with them (that day, later in the week…)

5. Discovery

  • Walk, bike, kayak somewhere new
  • Explore little known works of authors or poets you love

Good luck!


Need ongoing coaching and support?
Check out The Homeschool Alliance!

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Parenting | Comments Off on Five Magic Words

« Older Entries
  • Search the Blog

  • Julie Bogart
  • Welcome, I’m Julie Bogart.

    I’m a homeschooling alum -17 years, five kids. Now I run Brave Writer, the online writing and language arts program for families. More >>

    IMPORTANT: Please read our Privacy Policy.

  • New to Brave Writer? START HERE

  • FREE Resources

    • 7-Day Writing Blitz
    • Brave Writer Lifestyle Program
    • Brave Writer Sampler: Free Sample Products
    • Freewriting Prompts
    • Podcasts
  • Popular Posts

    • You have time
    • How writing is like sewing
    • Best curriculum for a 6 year old
    • Today's little unspoken homeschool secret
    • Do you like to homeschool?
    • Don't trust the schedule
    • You want to do a good job parenting?
    • If you've got a passel of kids
    • You are not a teacher
    • Natural Stages of Growth in Writing podcasts
  • Blog Topics

    • Brave Learner Home
    • Brave Writer Lifestyle
    • Classes
    • Contests/Giveaways
    • Friday Freewrite
    • High School
    • Homeschool Advice
    • Julie's Life
    • Language Arts
    • Movie Wednesday
    • Natural Stages of Growth
    • One Thing Principle
    • Our Team
    • Parenting
    • Philosophy of Education
    • Podcasts
    • Poetry Teatime
    • Products
    • Reviews
    • Speaking Schedule
    • Students
    • Writing about Writing
    • Young Writers
  • Archives

  • Brave Writer is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees (at no extra cost to you) by advertising and linking to amazon.com

    Content © Brave Writer unless otherwise stated.

What is Brave Writer?

  • Welcome to Brave Writer
  • Why Brave Writer Works
  • About Julie
  • Brave Writer Values
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Speaking Schedule

Brave Writer Program

  • Getting Started!
  • Stages of Growth in Writing
  • The Brave Writer Program
  • For Families and Students
  • Online Classes
  • Brave Writer Lifestyle

…and More!

  • Blog
  • Classroom
  • Store
  • Books in Brave Writer Programs
  • Contact Us
  • Customer Service
© 2025 Brave Writer
Privacy Policy
Children's Privacy Policy
Help Center