Archive for March, 2015

Poetry Teatime: Night Flower

Poetry Teatime

Brave Writer mom Jennifer writes:

I just wanted to share that my 6 (almost 7) year old daughter spontaneously wrote a poem today! This is such a feat since she has always been behind in language arts and her least favorite thing to do is write.

She did not start talking until she was 4 years old. When I say she wasn’t talking I mean next to nothing was coming out of her mouth, lots of defiant stares, but no words.

I decided to homeschool because I wanted her to have one-on-one help getting her caught up. After A LOT of work, she is at her grade level for reading and is as talkative as ever. Her least favorite thing to do is… WRITING!

She has had her days of tears and hulk-like rage at the prospect of writing and I was ready to give up. I made it my goal to focus on this aspect of language arts so we can foster a love of writing in our everyday lives.

I am SO GLAD I found the Brave Writer Lifestyle and products. I have been implementing the suggestions over the last month and am amazed at the results.

Poetry Tea is probably everyone’s favorite so far. While painting today she made a flower and made squiggly lines on her page. She told me, “I am writing a poem Mom.” I pulled the closest thing to me out and asked her to “read” me her poem. I jotted it down and was very impressed that she had such lovely thoughts to share.

Again, this is amazing because she has never enjoyed telling me anything to write down until now. I look forward to the progress we will make over the next year using this program!!

Here is Emily’s poem and painting:

Emilys Purple Night Flower blog

Night Flower

When the flower only comes out at night
I saw how beautiful it was
It did not grow in sunlight
but the moon shined onto the flower
and it started to grow
It looked as beautiful as purple.

Images by Brave Writer mom, Jennifer. Painting by Emily.

Visit our Poetry Teatime website!

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Is It Confusing? Is It Difficult? Are You Worried?

Find it hard to homeschool?

Good. Means you’re doing it right. Means you want to do it right. Means you’re evaluating and considering, caring, and revising.

  • How can you possibly find the right program and not ever reconsider?
  • How can you teach high school math when you found it impossible yourself?
  • Why wouldn’t you worry about your socially awkward tween or your dyslexic 2nd grader or your moody 16 year old?

Of course you’re tired—anxious, weary, feeling alone.

You have assigned yourself an enormous task—the complete education of your precious children, without any certainty that you can do it. You live in a petri dish of your own making—hoping that if you bring together the right ingredients with your children then educated persons will emerge and contribute to the world.

Even more—there are no guarantees your children will thank you for the herculean effort you are making on their behalf. They may grow up, go to college, marry, and say, “Heck no! I’m putting my own kids in school.” What then? Will that feel like you somehow failed them?

So, yes. You worry. Some days you feel overwhelmed and sad—wondering if this is how homeschool is supposed to feel. You want joy, natural learning, enthusiasm to explore the wide open world. You hope to see ties form between bickering children, and you want to feel close to your teens as they move away from you into their inevitable independence.

Will you do a good enough job? Will your kids agree?

Yes, this is how it is supposed to feel. Lean into it. As long as you homeschool, some doubt will ride sidecar to all the good you do every day. Not every decision will pan out, not every day will show fruit, not every effort will be worthwhile.

Yet if you stick with it, if you make adjustments that are considerate of your children as they are (as they show themselves to you), over time (cumulatively), your children will receive an education that suits them to adult life.

Doubt, worry, confusion, anxiety—as long as these are not swamping you (preventing you from doing the work of home education), they are simply conditions that go with the territory.

Keep going.

Keep trying.

Keep expanding your options.

Once in a while pause—admire how far you’ve come, how many things you’ve learned, how much you know now about education that you didn’t know when you started. Remind yourself that you are still learning and will know even more in another year! How grand is that!?

You’re okay now. Just as you are. Breathe.

The Homeschool Alliance

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice | 3 Comments »

Friday Freewrite: Waited on Hand and Foot

Friday Freewrite

What if you had an attendant who took care of your every need? List three reasons why that might be awesome then list three reasons why that might be objectionable.

New to freewriting? Check out our online guide.

Image by tanakawho (cc cropped)

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Single Efforts can Teach Profound Skills

Depth and Connection in Home Education

Because we focus on depth and connection when we teach, we don’t need repetition of activities to the degree that schools need it. We aren’t pushing kids through material to ensure we don’t “miss anything.” On the contrary, we have the opportunity to patiently focus on an individual moment in time, looking at a specific skill, working with that child until it is understood.

It may be that you will revise a single piece of writing with one child this year. If you do a thorough, caring, patient job with your child, ensuring that the child feels connected to you and open to the teaching (through kindness, consideration, and helpfulness), that single editing/revision experience may be enough for the entire year! It is possible to learn it all in that one paper—enough for this year’s effort. When a child is well taught—when you care to give full commitment once in a while to a specific skill—your student will “get it” and not need repeated pushes and nudges and practice over and over again to the point of irritation and tedium.

Instead, your child will be able to take what you imparted and then practice as needed using the skills acquired in that one event.

Likewise, you might find that your child produced one fabulous session of copywork where the handwriting looked elegant, and the proportions on the page were spot on, and the care to copy punctuation and indentation succeeded. That experience teaches so much more than dozens of pages of half-hearted effort.

We focus too much on what isn’t getting done instead of recognizing the power of specific, intentional, well-executed moments in time. Do your kids need to love every lesson? No. They don’t have to fall in love with writing to become good writers. They need the skills—they can get them with far less pain if you change your expectations. Quality instruction, affection and closeness over quantity of products.

Trust these single efforts. They are working better for you than you know.

Top image by Tim Pierce (cc cropped, text added)

Stages of Growth in Writing

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A “Why” Child

Seeing the Point

Brave Writer Team:

We started using The Writer’s Jungle, Arrow, Boomerang, and following your blog in November. I thought teaching writing would be easy because I was a natural and prolific writer in school winning numerous contests some of which included publication in anthologies. Our oldest son is very talented with improvisation. He spontaneously conducted a very entertaining interview with our Vizsla.

During Tea Time, he would hold up one of our Shakespeare Sonnet collections and recite what we would believe is Shakespeare just to inform us in the end that he made it all up. However, when it comes to getting it down on paper, he shuts down, I scream, and we both cry. We tried Write Shop, using Dragon Naturally Speaking to eliminate “writing,” and Writing with Skill without success.

We haven’t shed a tear or had a screaming match since starting Brave Writer. He even comments on how much he likes it because he can see the point behind everything we do. He is very much a “why” child.

I believe there was a disconnect between writing for fun and writing for “school” which caused the barriers. We are making progress. [Below is] his first free write that was taken through the process. He is 13 and enjoyed doing this. He even read it to the family during dinner.

Lanika

The Walk

I charge out of the door, tail wagging franticly for my walk. I see new things, sniff new things, and pee on new things. I scurry down the drive way, nails clanking on the concrete, over to the mail box lift my left leg up and release. I walk back to the door and allow my owner to put my leash on my collar. The leash despises me and I despise it. It is like a game of dominance between me and the leash; it tugs while I stay in place trying to observe things.

As we’re walking approaching other dogs, I want to play with them; I run towards them; my leash pulls; my owner tells me to sit. Upset with my owner, I give him the “you’re no fun” look. The dog dashes towards me; his owner pulls him away too. We look at each other – a possible friend gone by.

I continue walking, sniffing, and peeing on where other dogs have been. Smelling the scent of the ducks and birds drives my natural instinct to chase and retrieve.

Tongue hanging, wind hitting my face, and ears waving I sprint after the ducks. They protest with loud quacks and feathers rain down from the fleeing ducks. I come to a screeching halt as my owner stops me – not trusting me to stop on my own. I wasn’t going to go in the water – geez! I turn away, annoyed, walking back head down snorting.

As the sun set, we walk back home glancing at the gleaming water thinking about the walk.

The Writer's Jungle

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