Author Archive

Keep the focus pure

2 kids, 2 dogs and a cat

The competing demands on your time will eventually eat into your homeschool. You will ping pong between getting your kids out of the house into the big world so that they have experiences, meet other children, learn from passionate adults, and become skilled athletes, musicians, dancers, or pet rescuers, to utter seclusion where you shut the doors against that big world, and stay happily home steadily making progress in the subject areas of “school”—until you get tired of the routine and burst back onto the world’s stage.

This back-and-forth is not uncommon among homeschoolers, and is not even wrong. For some families, it’s a seasonal thing. In my family, for instance, we kept the sanest “stay-at-home” schedule in winter quarter while indulging a much more energetic out-of-home schedule in fall and spring (coinciding with soccer and lacrosse practices).

Even so, you can feel spread thin like too little butter over so much bread trying to keep up with the competing beliefs you have about a healthy, happy homeschool and childhood.

Opt out of that maze of confusion and adopt a different rubric. Fix your gaze on your individual children, and your children as a group. They are the focus. They are the rubric.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Who is left out?

2. What needs have I catered to and which ones have I overlooked?

3. What can I cut out? Or, conversely, what can I add in?

4. Which child is the most vocal about his or her needs? Who gets overlooked?

5. Why am I [adding in/taking out] this activity? Am I trying to please someone else?

6. If I could have a week the way I want it, would it look like the week I’m currently having? What one thing can I do to make it look more like what I wish it were?

7. Am I doing any of my activities out of guilt? Which ones?

8. Are there any activities that my child can do without me?

9. Are we having fun yet?

Your attention needs to be on your family, not on your philosophy or your community or your fears and worries. Over 15+ years of homeschooling, you will undulate between seasons of intense community involvement and quiet spans of time in at-home peacefulness. Balance isn’t always achieved week-to-week. Sometimes it is achieved over an entire childhood. That’s okay!

I remember that with five children, we made a rule that only two kids could play sports at any one time. That was our only route to sanity with all the driving involved.

Think about how your family functions best in this season and do that. You’ll know when that season needs to change by how your children are behaving, performing, and holding up. You’ll know it by how you are feeling too. At that moment, don’t beat yourself up! Simply recognize it’s time for a shift in the routine. Follow through and enjoy that season as long as it lasts.

Keep your focus pure.

Cross-posted on facebook.

Image by originallittlehellraiser

Posted in Homeschool Advice | Comments Off on Keep the focus pure

I’m so glad I homeschooled my kids…and didn’t build my business

Italy

Photo taken in Lucca Italy 2005 (family trip)

Not too infrequently, a parent will virtually back me against a wall and say, “But why haven’t I heard of Brave Writer before? Where have you been all these years?”

It’s a fair question. Usually a company of our longevity would have had its coming out party by now. Instead, I crept along, slowly adding staff and products in the by-ways of the Internet, content to grow organically rather than through a big media campaign or annual trudge to all the state conventions or by advertising and spending a lot of money.

There’s a reason I didn’t make a big splash into the homeschool curriculum world over the last decade: I was homeschooling.

I thought about that today. I homeschooled my kids. I wrote writing books on the side. I answered emails after I sang lullabies at bedtime or before the toddler pounced on my chest first thing in the morning. I didn’t go to conventions lest I miss a soccer game or ballet performance. I didn’t ask for speaking opportunities. I let them come to me and many times, turned them down. I haven’t been available. I didn’t want to BE available.

I wanted to write materials and teach classes, but I wanted to be able to do it without interrupting my time with my kids. I certainly didn’t do it perfectly. There are days I remember where I got stuck at the computer all morning and other days where I had a deadline and would hole up in my office to meet it while everyone “unschooled” for a week. The kids have a joke that sometimes they needed to “double click” on mom to “wake me up” from my computer-stare.

But I am happy to say that on the whole, my work didn’t interfere with my kids having a genuine parent-led homeschool experience. I spent hours upon hours with them, being a part of their lives, struggling to teach reading, math, grammar, writing, and history, just like you. I had to figure out how to balance our lives, and incorporate art, music, and nature, too.

Even more, the projects we did together have formed the basis for the products and classes Brave Writer offers. In fact, Liam said to me once that it is odd to read Brave Writer materials; it’s like reading a journal of his childhood. My family loves it, for instance, when we see your families create fairytale and homonym books, because we still have ours and we get a kick out of seeing how you do them, too. I email them to my adult children or show them your projects when they come home for a visit.

It’s just what I wanted to do, is all.

Some of the most well known curriculum creators have never homeschooled their kids. For those who are homeschooling, it is often the husbands who build the companies and travel to conventions while their wives provide the children’s education. I met one writing company owner who told me he had been to 26 conventions in a year (that’s one convention-one city!-every other weekend). Another well-known curriculum writer hires a tutor to homeschool her children so she can be free to write books for her homeschooling business.

I do understand this.

My friend and I used to joke. She ran our homeschool co-op, and I ran Brave Writer. She would say, “Our work would be so much easier if we just didn’t homeschool.” True!

But I did homeschool. For 17 years.

I’m glad I did. It helps me be a better homeschooling business owner, even if our growth has been slower than it might have been. I hope you will always share your struggles and experiences with me. They help Brave Writer be more responsive to you.

I look forward to meeting a slew of you over the next several years (particularly this year at our first ever Brave Writer Retreat in June!) now that I have time to travel because my kids are grown.

I just thought you might like to know how I made my decisions and how Brave Writer evolved. But I’m here now, all dressed up and ready to come out and play with you!

Hope I see/meet/hug many of you soon!

Cross-posted on facebook.

Posted in Julie's Life | 6 Comments »

You Are Smart Enough!

You are smart enough


I remember when Noah was in the 4th grade, his math text had a lesson about fractions: dividing them, multiplying them, adding and subtracting them. I looked at the page and panicked. I couldn’t remember a single thing about fractions—except they had confused me as a girl, and I resented the United States of America for not going on the sane metric system like they had promised back in 1975!

I stared blankly at the page. Nothing. Not a thing. I had no idea how to find a common denominator, or when to flip the fraction, or how to reduce the overgrown result once you got past the equals sign.

I was 35 years old.

My father’s voice rang in my head: “The only true intelligence is mathematical intelligence” shared with me after I had earned straight A’s in English, Social Studies, Spanish, Science, and Acting.

He didn’t mean any harm. I think he really believes that to this day, though he always approves of my work and was proud of my good grades.

Still, I managed to bungle math so many times, my Algebra 2 instructor suggested I quit at the semester. He bargained, “I’ll give you a B if you drop the class. It’s torturing you and I don’t want you to harm your GPA for college.”

Needless to say: my confidence in teaching math to my kids was low.

I used Cuisinaire Rods in the early years to help them understand multiplication, only to realize with astonishment: “Did everyone know that four groups of four makes sixteen? How had I never learned that?!”

Oh I knew my times tables. I just didn’t understand them.

I had not comprehended multiplication—the basis of it. To me, it was a set of memorized magic—tables of numbers associated with each other for inscrutable reasons. I never quite grasped the fundamentals: multiplication meant multiples of the same thing. Mind Blown!

How had I missed that? With the endless tutoring, teacher help, textbook study, math labs, and a father with an engineering degree, how had I missed the primary structure of multiplication? Why had no one made sure I had got that much? Perhaps because it was so obvious to everyone else, it didn’t seem possible that it was not obvious to me?

I don’t know. But what I do know is the day I had an epiphany about the times tables is the day I began my true math education. In my thirties. With four children and a baby on the way.

So when faced with fractions, I took the book, excused myself to the garage, and sat on the concrete floor playing with the rods and making myself understand fractions. It took me a bit of time, but not that long. After all, I had been baking, cooking, and quilting for a decade and a half. I had familiarity with fractions even if I didn’t understand how to use them in mathematical equations.

Understanding returned; or rather, grew! I saw what had eluded me in my grade school days.

I re-entered the house armed with the information, and now, understanding, that would enable me to teach Noah. He learned it all easily. Then he said, “So basically what you are saying is that I need to learn fractions now because we use them in school, but adults never need to use them, right? Because you didn’t understand them until a few minutes ago…”

Ha! Caught me. Made me laugh. I explained my profound lack of skill in math and how it had hampered me from many possible career options, and had made some of the work I do difficult as a result. But I resolved now that we learn together.

I never did become a fabulous math teacher to my children. Yet they have all surpassed my impoverished skills. I made sure they had tutors or went to classes at the local public school for higher math. Each of them has shown an aptitude far ahead of mine. But then again, they each had individualized help to catch those oversights before they mushroomed. They didn’t live under the wrong impression that true intelligence was only found in mathematics.

There is no subject area you can’t learn along with your children. I had a friend who was bilingual in Spanish and English, but without a good working knowledge of written Spanish or English. She hired a tutor…for herself! And learned. Then taught her kids.

It can be done. You are now an adult, with far more experience, patience, and mental agility than when you were 10, 12, and 16. What you missed before can be learned now. At the very least, you can ensure that your children have the chance to understand what was inscrutable to you. Take the time to find the tools that bring you understanding, not just information or practice sheets.

Then share them with your children and continue to advance your own understanding. You are smart enough. You are committed enough. You love your children enough. There are tools and helps enough.

Enjoy your educational renaissance!

Image by jimmiehomeschoolmom (cc)

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Julie's Life | Comments Off on You Are Smart Enough!

Keep reading

Keep readingImage by Ally Mauro (cc tinted, text added)

In all our connectivity, we sometimes think we’ve read all day long, when in fact, we’ve absorbed bites of information as our eyes scroll over screens.

Read aloud time is one way to ensure that you get a dose of literature in your day. It nourishes you and your kids. It may take some work to find a way to fit it in (for me, I started the day with read aloud time—right after breakfast). But it’s worth it. If you have wiggly toddlers or fussy babies, try to read to the older ones while they are napping or at the breast (if the baby tolerates it – some do, some hate it).

In addition to reading to the kids, though, I hope you will read for pleasure yourself. Consider it a part of your “teacher-training.” You are a much better commentator on literature and movies when you, yourself, are reading adult fare. You are also a better human being when you connect to characters and their struggles/hurdles and discover new resources for how to meet your own challenges. You are a happier person when you are taken away from below zero weather, a computer in the shop, and an empty refrigerator to the tropics and a love story.

Reading for pleasure may seem like a chore initially. Who has time for that?

Here are a few ways I found the time when I was either pregnant, nursing, or both, and managing small children.

woman-reading 2

I read while I laid down to nurse a baby. This was my favorite way to read for years. I felt like I was being given the gift of a rest each time I did it. It didn’t work with nursing toddlers, but during the first year it did.

I listened to books on tape while making dinner. I put the TV on—usually Arthur—for the kids. Then I’d go to the kitchen and turn my tape recorder on low and listen while I prepared dinner. Totally changed how I felt about that task and time of day. I listened to so many books that way (I used to have a list).

Long car rides—I’d listen to a book on tape or CD. I had a few of these for conferences and instead of music, I would tackle Hemingway or Hugo or some other difficult to read book. The narration of the book helped me press through some of the difficult passages.

I used to read books aloud to my husband. We’d read a chapter before bed each night. We read some really long ones, including the entire Asia series by James Clavell (Shogun, Noble House, etc.).

I kept a book in my purse. All those visits to the doctor or dentist, sitting in a parked car during soccer or lacrosse practice, waiting for a performance to start for band or ballet—these moments are often crowded by cell phone scrolling now. But if you keep a book on your phone or if you tuck a paperback into your purse, you can use them for reading instead.

The benefits to reading for yourself are enormous. I recommend keeping one book going that is just for you. It’s like giving yourself a big chocolate bar and eating a square of it each day. It’s delicious, and you deserve it. Moreover, it makes you a better home educator and you’ll hardly even realize why.

Image of woman reading by Spirit-Fire

Posted in Julie's Life, Reading | Comments Off on Keep reading

It’s not learning, it’s having learned

Harry Potter slime party

Harry Potter slime party image by woodleywonderworks (slime recipe)

If you can’t detect a pulse in your homeschool, it’s time to get your heart pumping again. There’s no shame in finding yourself exhausted or bored. These are ordinary experiences in any long-term activity. The idea isn’t to make yourself feel better by pretending, or to explain away the lost enthusiasm, or to judge yourself for the natural result of hard work and commitment. We get nowhere when we heap blame and shame on ourselves.

I’ve urged parents to consider the idea that their investment in home education ought to exceed their children’s output. When I did so, I did not have in mind that the parent would necessarily sit side-by-side with a 16 year old pointing to the next Algebra 2 problem on the page to ensure that it gets done (though truth be told, I did do that for one of my kids because he needed it at the time). Still, that is not the vision I had in mind.

The concept to consider is this one:

Your homeschool depends on what you, the parent, brings to it.

Let’s take a look at what you can bring that will create/foster learning. Then let’s take a look at what you can do for yourself to prevent exasperation, fatigue, and disillusionment with the whole project (we’ll cover the second one in an additional post.)

To foster an environment for learning means that you, yourself, have a sense of what generates learning to begin with! Textbooks don’t do it. Workbooks don’t do it. Heck, even some teachers and tutors and classes don’t do it. Learning is not imposed from external sources, though external sources can facilitate learning.

Learning is an internal experience that comes from connecting to the ideas presented and making them your own. The concepts, practices, ideas, systems, facts, and stories are taken in through any number of means (lectures, DVDs, workbooks, classes, YouTube videos, conversations, cartoons, the Kahn Academy, reading, your local public school, self-teaching through following the rabbit trail of your own interest, a library, the Internet, hearing about the topic from your best friend, trying it yourself, practice, using whatever it is in ‘real’ life…). You get the idea.

Learning is what happens to human beings who are engaged with life. Intentional learning (where you set out to master X set of concepts or books or musical pieces or dance steps…) happens when a learner takes responsibility to follow through on a course of study using any one of those means suggested above. Sometimes intentional learning is supported by accountability structures (weekly piano lesson, tests, narrations, due dates and deadlines, competitions, attempts to be published, co-op classes, a promise to mom, rehearsals, performances, traditional school). Sometimes intentional learning is not structured or monitored and it happens at the pace and enthusiasm level of the learner.

The key to a happy homeschool is the experience of satisfying progress in learning. Kids and parents need to know that together they are in a context of stimulating discovery, that satisfies the child’s need for two things:

1) challenge to grow, and

2) comfort at having mastered or achieved.

Parents often measure learning by challenge (how much effort the attempt to learn requires) and see mastery as an “end point” to be acknowledged, but then to move on to the next challenge.

We all like to be challenged to grow (that’s what drives us forward in life). But an equally important part of growth is enjoying the fruits of having learned—it is the act of using what has been gained that solidifies “the thing” as a person’s own possession. It feels incredible to use skills that are mastered before moving onto the next challenge. Too often in homeschool we forget to revel in “having learned.” We forget to indulge the desire to do what feels easy and natural, for a good bit, before hurrying off to “long division” or the next unfamiliar historical period, or from an easy musical piece to Beethoven, or from readers to chapter books.

Playing Piano
Image by Shardayyy
Maybe your child just wants to write limerick after limerick after limerick once he’s got the pattern down. There’s nothing wrong with that! No need to hurry him into the villanelle or sonnet to prove he’s “still learning.”

Just because your child is over the hump with manuscript writing doesn’t mean she needs to immediately plunge into cursive. Enjoy manuscript. Get tools that enhance the experience (different styles of manuscript, make place cards, decorate photo pages with captions). Really enjoy the skillful use of manuscript without any demand to “grow again.”

If your homeschool feels strained, it could be that too much emphasis is being put on “next, next, next” and you haven’t sufficiently enjoyed “having achieved.” One way to regain the pleasure of home education is to spend a week (a month!) simply recounting and using the skills mastered. What would happen, for instance, if after mastering the multiplication tables, you found dozens of ways to use them?

You, the parent, could find games online, you could set up a scavenger hunt where the clues are revealed after answering a multiplication fact, your children could create times table pages that are decorated and laminated, you could go through your house looking for all the games that can be played using multiplication and then stack them up and play them!

For a week long period, each time you and the kids find a use for multiplication, toss nickels, dimes, and quarters into a jar, and at the end, you could sort them and then multiply the number of coins by the coinage value to see how much money you collected.

The possibilities are endless, but they need to be created by you. This is what I mean by your investment. This is how you partner with your kids.

Your kids won’t think of ways to reinforce their learning on their own (necessarily—though sometimes they do and we might be the ones to shut them down saying, “We already did that. It’s time to do x, y, and z”). Heck, you may find it rough to think of creative ideas on your own. That’s why we have each other and the oh-so-awesome Internets (ha!) to aid us! We want to get beyond the endless drive, push, press, complete, move on, try harder moments of learning and learn to also revel in the joy of having learned!

If you just completed reading aloud the entire Harry Potter series, why wouldn’t you now dedicate the next weeks to watching all the films? Why wouldn’t you host a Harry Potter party with games, and trivia quizzes, and cookies that look like each of the characters?

“Having learned” is under-appreciated in homeschooling, yet it is one of the ways that you sustain the momentum and joy of the experience!

Making the subject area your own possession is another way of saying what Charlotte Mason says:

“We, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and generous curriculum, taking care only that all knowledge offered to him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas. Out of this conception comes our principle that:––

“Education is the Science of Relations’; that is, a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of––

“Those first-born affinities; That fit our new existence to existing things.”

So revel! Enjoy! Validate “having learned.” It’s your right as a homeschooling family.

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