Engage with Nature: Week 3
Have you been surveying your neighborhood for flowers in bloom? Or watching birds from a cozy spot by the window?
Nature sure likes to show off in spring! That makes it a great season to hop into nature study, one of the Brave Writer Lifestyle elements.
To encourage you to add or maintain nature study routines, we created twenty simple prompts to help you and yours engage with nature.
Each Friday in April we’re sharing five simple ideas.
Pick one to do the following week, then let us know what you did by sharing on Instagram (tag us: @bravewriterofficial).
Ideas for Week 3
- Build a fairy house at the base of a tree with items like twigs, leaves, rocks, and flowers.
- Pretend you are a bird: What color would you be? Feather design? Big or small?
- Draw nature finds.
- Turn over rocks and see what’s underneath (turn them back gently).
- Hug a tree—and while you’re at it, examine the bark.
See Other Ideas Here
Practice Pages!
Why We Created Practice Pages
Do you sometimes wonder whether or not your kids will ever catch on?
It can be maddening to remind your child to USE CAPITAL LETTERS only to see a sea of lowercase letters starting every sentence.
You might be wondering if your child’s brain is more like a spaghetti strainer than a storage unit for important facts and information!
What if we told you that your child could reshape their brain for success—simply by practicing? It’s true!
Neuroscientists say that “cells that fire together wire together.”
Every time your child engages in focused learning, they’re strengthening neural pathways that make mastering skills easier and more intuitive.
But there’s more!
Did you know that repetition aids in moving memories from short-term to long-term storage?
This means the more your child practices, the more lasting their knowledge becomes. And while they’re catching those Z’s, sleep is busy reinforcing these neural connections, so they’re even smarter the next day!
Sleep is our favorite hack for retaining what you learn in practice!
Brave Writer’s Practice Pages are designed to help your child tap into this incredible brain power. It’s all about deliberate practice—engaging, goal-oriented activities that turn weaknesses into strengths and challenges into achievements.
The pages are short, doable, and actually work to help kids ages 8–14 finally unlock those tricky grammar and punctuation puzzles and make the concepts stick.
Each set gives you:
- An engaging explanation of the tricky concept
- Passages from classic children’s literature
- Dictation exercises that help the concepts stick
- Practice and progress that build confidence
The best part? Buy them in a batch and SAVE!
- Homophones: There, Their, and They’re
- Nifty Nouns: Common and Proper
- Versatile Verbs
- Adjective or Adverb
- Apostrophes: Contractions and Possessive Nouns
- Farther or Further?
- Colons, Semicolons, and Em Dashes
- I or Me?
Our BIG BATCH includes ALL 12!
Buy once and use for all your kids!
Here’s to fewer headaches and more aha! moments.
Story Delight Starts Here
Add a dash of enchantment to your homeschool!
You’ll need:
- One child who enjoys surprises (add more to taste)
- 2 teaspoons of imagination
- 1 heaping pinch of curiosity
Instructions:
Mix gently with a whimsical writing coach. Stir in a swirl of wonder. Flip your fables, trade places with daring dragons, and wander into wild, wondrous worlds—then watch the magic manifest.
Serves:
Dreamers, doodlers, and storytellers of all kinds.
Out of an ingredient? Rusty on technique?
We’ve got a hack for that!
Step into the Story Switcheroo kitchen to whisk and stir with a seasoned chef (a.k.a. writing coach) by your side.
[Podcast #335] How to Build Mathematical Imagination Through Everyday Life, Play, and Curiosity
What if math felt less like drudgery and more like discovery?
In this Brave Writer podcast episode, we explore “mathematical imagination” and the many ways math is already alive in everyday family life. We talk about counting, measuring, predicting, sports, video games, art, nature, and how curiosity can turn numbers into something meaningful.
We also share practical ways to make formal math time more inviting, from manipulatives and mystery-based activities to math tea times and even bubblegum math. If you’ve ever wanted to help your child experience math as a language for describing the world, this conversation is for you.
Tune in, then come tell us what math looks like in your home.
Show Notes
For many of us, math was taught as a subject of procedures: memorize the facts, follow the steps, get the answer. It often felt detached from daily life, as though numbers only mattered on worksheets and tests.
But math is far more alive than that.
Math is one of the ways we describe the world. It helps us make sense of time, quantity, distance, proportion, patterns, and change. When we begin to see it that way, math becomes less about performance and more about perception. It becomes a way of noticing.
That shift can change everything for our kids.
Math is already happening
One of the gifts of homeschooling is that we are not limited to a single hour of “math time.” We live with math all day long. We check the clock. We divide food fairly. We estimate how long something will take. We compare measurements, track the weather, count steps, budget money, and notice patterns in nature.
Children encounter mathematical ideas long before they can explain them formally. A young child counting toes, sorting objects, or asking whether thumbs are fingers is already exploring categories, quantity, and comparison. A child measuring sunflower growth or guessing how many windows are in the house is practicing estimation and observation. These are not distractions from math. They are the beginning of it.
When we treat these moments as meaningful, we help our children build a relationship with math that starts in curiosity rather than anxiety.
Make math tangible and relevant
Children understand ideas more deeply when they can touch them, test them, and connect them to something they care about.
That might look like using edible manipulatives for multiplication, baking to explore fractions and measurement, or weighing ingredients on a kitchen scale. It might look like comparing Fahrenheit and Celsius, noticing patterns in flower petals, or graphing how many leaves fall from a tree over the course of a week.
It may also show up in places we do not immediately recognize as academic. A child playing Minecraft may be calculating resource efficiency. A child managing a farm simulation game may be comparing rates of return. A sports-loving child may already understand scoring systems, percentages, and statistical comparisons better than we realize.
The point is not to force a lesson onto every interest. It is to notice where math already matters and help our children make that connection consciously.
Wonder matters as much as practice
Of course, children do need practice. Some parts of math require repetition, concentration, and patience. Not every lesson will feel magical.
But understanding grows best when it is supported by meaning.
When children can see what math is for, the formal work begins to make more sense. The symbols are no longer floating in space. They are attached to real experiences, real questions, and real discoveries.
This is why prediction, mystery, and surprise can be so powerful. Estimating how many beans are in a jar, wondering whether your wingspan matches your height, or mapping the solar system across your neighborhood invites children into math through fascination. They want to know the answer because the question belongs to them.
That is a very different posture than simply finishing a page.
Create an environment that invites attention
Sometimes the activity itself is hard. When that happens, we can still make the experience more welcoming.
A special snack, a candle, a clipboard, a favorite seat by the window, a cup of tea, a small ritual before beginning. These quiet choices can transform the emotional atmosphere around math. Children are more willing to stay with challenging work when the environment feels calm, personal, and pleasant.
We do not need to make every lesson entertaining. But we can make room for comfort, dignity, and delight.
Help children see the world mathematically
What we want is bigger than correct answers. We want children to notice patterns, ask questions, compare systems, make predictions, and understand relationships. We want them to see that math is not a disconnected school subject but one of the tools humans use to interpret reality.
When we nurture mathematical imagination, we are doing more than teaching arithmetic. We are helping our children become more observant, more thoughtful, and more confident in the face of complexity.
Math does not have to begin with a workbook.
It can begin with a question, a game, a measuring tape, a recipe, a sky full of stars, or a child who wants to know why.
Resources
- Explore the Journey North Mystery Class archives
- Encounter solar system planet sizes and distances in this fun activity
- Find our favorite books for kids and parents in the Brave Writer Book Shop
- Visit Julie’s Substack to find her special podcast for kids (and a lot more!)
- Purchase Julie’s newest book, Help! My Kid Hates Writing
- Find community at the Brave Learner Home
- Learn more about the Brave Writer Literature & Mechanics programs
- Start a free trial of CTCmath.com to try the math program that’s sure to grab and keep your child’s attention
- Subscribe to Julie’s Substack newsletters, Brave Learning with Julie Bogart and Julie Off Topic, and Melissa’s Catalog of Enthusiasms
- Sign up for our Text Message Pod Ring to get podcast updates and more!
- Send us podcast topic ideas by texting us: +1 (833) 947-3684
- Interested in advertising with us? Reach out to media@bravewriter.com
Connect with Julie
- Instagram: @juliebogartwriter
- Threads: @juliebogartwriter
- Bluesky: @bravewriter.com
- Facebook: facebook.com/bravewriter
Connect with Melissa
- Website: melissawiley.com
- Substack: melissawiley.substack.com
- Instagram: @melissawileybooks
- Bluesky: @melissawiley.bsky.social
Produced by NOVA
Instead of busy, what if life were FULL?
Every so often, we’ll give you a peek into Brave Learner Home, our supportive online community. Today’s post features an encouraging message by Dawn Smith (President of Brave Writer) that she recently shared.
There’s a word I used to catch myself mindlessly saying, and I hear it everywhere. Someone asks how life is going, and out comes: “Busy.” It just slips right out. But when my kids were still quite young, I started using a different word, and it changed something for me.
Busy or FULL?
There’s something about the idea of fullness that shifted my perspective.
- A full day of exploring nature with my kids.
- A full pantry and a table filled with good food.
- A house full of experiments, innovation, and learning.
It’s the same mound of laundry growing with each muddy nature walk, the same need to feed endlessly hungry mouths, and the same pile of cardboard, tape, and markers scattered all over the floor, but full days feel like something to cherish, rather than something to endure.
As you lean into this season, I encourage you to look for the fullness in your days. When you reflect on your homeschool year this way, even assessment shifts. Instead of something to get through, it becomes a reflection on everything that filled your days. It’s a chance to see what your family actually did, what your kids learned, and what surprised you.
That’s not a daunting task to endure. That’s a gift to cherish.
The Heart of Education
I believe in a pedagogy (the method and practice of teaching) that puts these three things at the center:
- Curiosity
- Learning
- Questions
I don’t believe in a pedagogy that starts with a viewpoint and then hunts and pecks for support to protect that perspective.
One is critical thinking and the other is apologetics.
We’re all capable of both, every day of our lives. It takes self-awareness to be able to recognize when you are being an apologist rather than a thinker. It’s the temptation of an ideologue. Being beholden to a belief system is dangerous to critical thought.
The hardest thing I’ve ever done is confront my need for the evidence to support what I want to be true. I’ve experienced the internal battle, the anxiety, the fear of losing meaning and friends. I’ve had to rethink so many of my assumptions over the years. There have been costs associated with that rethinking. But I wouldn’t change the journey.
If you are going through a season of rethinking, congratulations. It takes courage. It’s the heart of what education is all about.
