How to Teach Through Conversation
A mom once told me that she used our Dart program to share read alouds with her 10-year-old son. They had the best conversations she’s ever had with him about books.
Her son was so jazzed that he started reading chapter books on his own and pointed out punctuation and literary devices in them. He has now read 800 pages on his own!!
The mom told me that she didn’t realize how easy it was to teach through discussion. Yeah: we forget how much we learn through simply talking with real people.
That can be true for you too!
The video linked below is a brief example of how you might converse with your child using a passage from Charlotte‘s Web.
Watch the Video
If you’d like to ditch the workbooks, Brave Writer has a level that is right for your family and we’d love to help you change the way your kids learn so that it sticks.
Homeschooling Teens: Essay Writing and Academic Standards
Around here, we love snuggling up with blankets and books, building forts, pouring tea, and fingerpainting. But your teen needs more than homemade cookies and read-alouds to thrive academically.
Scary thought?
Deep breath.
Brave Writer online classes offer warm fuzzies and MORE. Each class is designed to meet Common Core and academic standards. And among those classes, we offer both Essay Prep and Essay Writing courses. Check them out below.
Essay Prep
Essay Writing: First Year
Essay Writing: Second Year
Essay Writing: Third Year
- 301: Advanced Composition
- 302: MLA Research Essay
[Podcast #330] Board Games: Let Them Do the Teaching!
What if the best critical thinking curriculum is already in your closet?
This week on the Brave Writer podcast, we explore why board games and card games do more than pass the time. From Monopoly and Settlers of Catan to Quiddler, Pandemic, and even Operation, we unpack how games build patience, strategy, communication skills, resource management, and flexible thinking—all through play.
We share personal stories, favorite family games, and one powerful rule: when your child asks to play, say yes.
Ready to rethink learning? Pull out a game tonight and let it do the teaching.
Show Notes
When we think about education, we often picture curriculum guides, lesson plans, and carefully sequenced objectives. But what if one of the most powerful learning tools has been sitting on your shelf all along?
- Board games.
- Card games.
- Dice games.
Games invite children into what philosopher Bernard Suits called “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” And that voluntary part matters. When a child chooses to play, they are already invested. They care. And caring is the gateway to thinking well.
Relaxed Alertness Is the Sweet Spot
In The Brave Learner, we talk about the brain state known as relaxed alertness—a combination of pleasure and meaningful risk. Games create exactly that condition. There’s enough challenge to matter. Enough uncertainty to spark curiosity. Enough safety to try again.
Children learn patience when they wait their turn. They learn deeper patience when they struggle through confusing rules. They learn resilience when they lose and try again.
And here’s the secret: they don’t experience it as “character training.” They experience it as play.
Academic Skills Hide in Plain Sight
Consider Monopoly. Yes, it can be long. Yes, feelings may flare. But it quietly teaches skip counting, making change, budgeting, and resource management.
- Settlers of Catan introduces strategic allocation and trade.
- Scrabble builds vocabulary and pattern recognition.
- Quiddler strengthens spelling awareness.
- Prime Climb makes prime numbers intuitive.
- Operation develops fine motor control and body awareness.
- Mousetrap introduces iteration and engineering logic—especially if you test each step as you build.
Even a simple score sheet in Yahtzee reinforces arithmetic and pencil fluency.
We search endlessly for engaging curriculum. Meanwhile, game designers have already done the hard work of making learning irresistible.
Explore, Explain, Experiment
When you bring home a new game, consider three phases:
- Explore. Open the box. Examine the pieces. Look at the artwork. Estimate how long learning it will take.
- Explain. Let one child read and interpret the rules. This builds communication skills and empathy. The explainer needs grace. The listeners need curiosity.
- Experiment. Play a practice round. Break the rules on purpose. Test edge cases. See what happens. Lower the stakes so learning can rise.
That experimentation step is often skipped. Don’t skip it.
Competitive and Cooperative
Some games pit players against each other. Others, like Pandemic, unite players against the game itself. Both are valuable.
Competitive games teach strategy and sportsmanship. They also teach negotiation, shared problem-solving, and collective victory.
Your family can benefit from both.
The Most Important Rule
Years ago, we heard a simple piece of advice: Whenever a child asks to play a game, drop everything and play.
We tried it. It changed our families.
When children invite us into play, they are inviting connection. They are ready for the lesson. If we delay too often, they eventually stop asking.
Games teach content. They teach skills. But more than that, they build relationship. And relationship is where real learning thrives.
Tonight, instead of adding one more worksheet, pull out a deck of cards.
Let the game do the teaching.
Resources
- Find our favorite board games in the Brave Writer Book Shop
- Brave Writer class registration is open!
- Visit Julie’s Substack to find her special podcast for kids (and a lot more!)
- Purchase Julie’s new 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
The Kind of Writing AI Can Never Reproduce
They say writing as a job will be eliminated by AI. Weirdly, I agree.
The kind of writing being replaced by AI is the kind of writing most writing curricula teach.
And that’s the problem.
When schools and homeschool programs teach writing by format, they admit that writing can be reproduced by a machine easily.
You know what kind of writing AI can never reproduce? Your:
- original thinking,
- ideas,
- insights,
- and beliefs.
Humanity First
Kids need help finding those words and thoughts that live inside them first! Their writing starts with their humanity, not structure.
AI is great at the machinery of writing.
But we humans will always be better at being our original selves.
We teach WRITERS, not writing. We would for love you to try the Brave Writer difference! Growing Brave Writers is our best program to grow a writer.
Why Should You Include Your Child’s Misspelled Words in the Baby Book?
When we teach kids to speak, we’re so nice. We take all their misspoken words and laugh delightedly and jot them down in the baby book. We treat thise words like sacred text and family lore— like the risky adorable self expression that they are!
Why don’t we do the same thing when our kids are first learning to write? Why aren’t we thrilled at their attempts to spell?
Your youngster is not a bad speller.
Your child is inventing written language to represent the firehose of words and ideas that they can say easily. Spelling lags behind oral speech because writing is harder. But it requires the same opportunity for risk and support.
What was your child’s first spoken word? Do you remember how proud you were?
Do you remember one of the first words your child tried to write that they misspelled? Can you see it now with delight?
For more support, Growing Brave Writers helps parents teach their kids to write following a natural developmental process.
