Write from the point of view of a squirrel who can’t remember where it buried its stash of nuts.
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Archive for April, 2018
Get the Scoop on Brave Writer Products!
Julie Tells All!
The Secret to Using Brave Writer Programs
April 20, 2018
Two identical sessions:
11:00 AM and 4:00 PM Eastern
I’d like to invite you to a FREE webinar. Pick the time of day that works best for you.
We keep getting these questions (it’s curriculum shopping season!):
- How do I use Brave Writer?
- How can I purchase what I need for a large family?
- How do your products fit together?
What better way to answer them than to hang out for an hour and cover everything?
In this “tell all,” I’ll show you how Brave Writer transforms your family’s writing experience—covering the requirements, inspiring your learners—through our products and online classes.
We’ll look at:
- how to teach mechanics AND original writing
- which products you need for families with lots of kids and ages
- why Brave Writer works well with any homeschool style
- what to do about high school writing, too
I’ll take questions, and give you a 9-week writing plan to use right away (free).
An “early-bird catches the worm” discount will be available to all who register for the webinar (even if you watch on replay).
(Psst: free gifts to a few lucky families during the live event; attend live if you can!)
Are you pumped? I am! Can’t wait to help you help yourself into a fabulous writing life with your family.
REGISTER 11:00 AM
REGISTER 4:00 PM
We can take up to 500 members per identical session.
Excited to share with you!
Movie Wednesday: Back to the Future
by Amy Frantz, Brave Writer alum
Marty McFly is a normal ’80s teenager with normal boring parents and normal concerns like girls, school, and being in a rock band. Marty worries that, like his father, he won’t ever amount to anything because he’s afraid to be rejected. But one day Marty receives a call from his mentor, the eccentric Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown, who claims to have unlocked the secret to time travel. Doc has transformed a car into a time machine! But Doc’s experiment goes awry with the arrival of some unexpected consequences and Marty is accidentally flung back in time to the 1950s where he encounters his own parents as teenagers. When Marty accidentally interferes with his parents’ past, his own future begins to disappear. He must team up with a younger Doc to fix time, make his parents fall in love, and get himself…back to the future!
[This post contains Amazon affiliate links. When you click on those links to make purchases,
Brave Writer receives compensation at no extra cost to you. Thank you!]
Back to the Future was released in 1985 and was an immediate box office hit. Produced by Steven Spielberg, directed by Robert Zemeckis, and starring Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, Back to the Future launched a beloved franchise and is still considered a staple of science fiction today.
The sets for the film were built on a Universal back lot. The ’50s sets were built first so that the crew could then age them for the sequences in the ’80s. A lot of research was done for the ’50s pieces. At the time, not many films were being set in the ’50s because it was considered “too recent,” a sentiment which seems pretty hard to comprehend now in the 21st century. For modern context, if the film were remade now about a teenager living in 2018, the sequences set back in time would be set in 1988 (which is pretty close to when the film was actually made)!
The DeLorean that Doc converts into a time machine is perhaps one of the most iconic images from ’80s science fiction. The design team even used air plane parts for the unique interior. It’s hard to imagine the story without it, but at one point the time machine was going to be refrigerator!
Originally, a different actor was cast in the leading role of Marty McFly even though Michael J. Fox was the filmmakers’ first choice. When Fox eventually took on the role, he had to work a grueling schedule because he was also filming a television series during the same time that Back to the Future was in production. As a result he got very little sleep and had to film later in the day to accommodate his TV schedule, which you might never know to watch his high energy performance in the finished product.
A note to parents: Although Back to the Future is rated PG, it does contain more mature themes than you might find in a PG film today. We recommend looking up the film on websites such as Common Sense Media before deciding if it is right for your family.
Discussion Questions
- “I was never like that when I was your age!” various adults around Marty, including his mom, exclaim. But when Marty goes back in time, he discovers that his own mother didn’t behave all that differently from the teenagers Marty knows. What might the film be trying to say about the way time changes people and their own recollections of themselves?
- Great Scott, it’s a paradox! Back to the Future plays with several time travel paradoxes. One of them is the bootstrap paradox (example: you’re a time traveler and you decide to take a copy of your favorite work of classic literature back in time to have the author sign it. But when you get there, you discover that the author does not exist! There’s no one to write your favorite book! So, you copy out the book and publish it under the author’s name, so that it can still exist. But wait! Who originally wrote that book?). How many instances of this paradox can you find in the film?
- How do you think you would react if you went back in time and met your parents when they were your age?
- Some aspects of Back to the Future haven’t aged well, for instance some of the racial stereotypes and gender norms included in the film. Did you notice anything that you didn’t agree with? Explain your answer.
Additional Resources
Podcast: Back to Homeschool
Let’s talk about hominess in homeschool, and how you can you help your kids stay on task, while still experience the peace and comfort that home provides all of us.
Today’s podcast shares ways to move from the playfulness of summer to fall, when home educators sometimes feel more pressure to make their children learn. Even if it’s not summer where you are (April is Autumn for those down under) these practices can be applied at any time of the year!
At Brave Writer, we steadfastly resist images of yellow #2 pencils, school buses, and apples because we are not bringing school into our families. We want to reinforce the properties of home, as opposed to reinforcing the qualities of a faux school.
Home is about relaxing; letting go of obligation and pressure. It’s the place you get to show up as yourself – and when we mix in the properties of school, we’re actually violating that sense of hominess.
Think about the things that bring comfort into your life, and your children’s life – a snack, a foot rub, someone holding your hand – and invite them into your home. Here are just a few of our ideas:
- A small, decorative teapot for each of your children (which also lets them choose their preferred beverage at Poetry Teatime)
- All kinds of candles. Kids love candles, and they can really change the mood in a room.
- Make your workspace pretty and invite a little bit of enchantment by adding something new and unexpected: colored pens, different colored paper, or even a family shoulder rub train. You have jurisdiction over your space!
Triangle in Help
If you have two or three children, it’s possible to offer each one a fair amount of devotion and energy throughout the day. However, if you have five, seven, nine, or even more children, it’s just not possible to provide that same level of devotion and energy.
You will need to triangle in on some help. You will need online classes, co-ops, part-time enrollment, or maybe even some children in school. Your children deserve a rich academic life, and you may not be able to offer that, alone, to 11 children at 11 different levels. Having children was our choice, so we need to take responsibility for that by helping them get what they need.
Don’t feel robbed if your children learn without you – you are creating an environment for learning to take place. You don’t have to be the person who makes the spark happen! You can put out the firewood and kindling, and they might get their own flint going.
Would you please post a review on Apple Podcasts for us?
Help a homeschooler like you find more joy in the journey. Thanks!
Friday Freewrite: One Food
If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would you pick and why?
New to freewriting? Check out our online guide.
