A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

What if you could help your kids learn science from your current read aloud? Or from picture books, or novels, or nonfiction—any children’s book. Yes, it’s possible!

The April Master Class in Brave Learner Home will teach you how (replay will be available)!

Our webinar speakers, Valerie Bang-Jensen, Ph.D. and Mark Lubkowitz, Ph.D. co-authored a book, Sharing Books, Talking Science: Exploring Scientific Concepts with Children’s Literature, which helps us parents “see” the science in children’s literature. With this insight, along with time and practice, we can begin to think like a scientist—and our kids can, too!

Valerie and Mark will show us how to explore seven foundational science concepts with children’s literature. 

Both professors at Saint Michael’s College, our speakers bring with them over twenty years of experience in exploring the natural partnership between science and children’s literature. Their webinar will teach us how to help our learners think, talk, and read like scientists. 

Join us and watch the Master Class webinar: Sharing Books, Talking Science.

Just imagine: sharing your favorite books and covering science at the same time!

As brave learners, we know this is another opportunity to help our children learn everything through anything!

Are your kids just jumping through hoops and checking off requirements, or is their learning deep and meaningful? 

What if you helped them:

• become fascinated rather than convinced?
• learn to interpret original text without preconceptions?
• do research with curiosity about varying perspectives?
• imagine and understand other views, even if they don’t agree?

That’s how critical thinking develops! 

Explore how you can encourage the development of your child’s rhetorical imagination—one of the key factors in critical thinking—as Julie explains in her new book, Raising Critical Thinkers: A Parent’s Guide to Growing Wise Kids in the Digital Age!

Julie’s new book offers practical tools and activities, so you can help your children grow in their ability to explore the world around them, examine how loyalties and biases affect their beliefs, and generate fresh insight.

Brave Learner Home is your reliable online community and coaching space to provide you the support you crave for a thriving homeschool.

Our members are ecstatic! We’ve got a huge library of resources for you to turn to any time you have questions whether about math or parenting or reading or extracurriculars!

Can’t wait to see you inside!

And I can’t WAIT to talk about my new book with you!

Join Brave Learner Home

Curriculum too predictable?
Kids want something different?
In search of hands-on learning for an active, artistic, or engineering kid?
Need something tangible to show progress?

Here’s the secret sauce: Project Time! 

Project Time helps parents find productive space between their own agenda for homeschooling and following a child’s interests. 

Dedicated project time (and space!) creates opportunities for our children to build their self-awareness as kids explore:

• What excites or interests me? 
• What does meaningful work feel like to me? 
• What are my standards for what I am creating or doing?
• How do I manage all the parts of this project? 

Leslie Martino, homeschool coach and mother of four, joins us to share specific tips gleaned from her experience helping her kids and other families learn with projects.

Dr. William Stixrud is back—and ready to help us motivate our kids!

• “I just want you to live up to your potential.”
• “You need this for college.”
• “I know what’s best for you.”
• “Because I said so.” 
• “If you don’t, then—”

Are you insisting, lecturing, scolding, threatening, or ordering your kids around more than you ever imagined?

Do you have conflict with your children when you want connection? 

We just want our teens and kids to do well and be well, but so often, they don’t listen to us! Then we have a power struggle on our hands. 

Learn how to have the effective conversations most likely to motivate your kids and teens! 

Our most popular speaker ever returns to Brave Learner Home in November: Dr. William Stixrud!

Dr. William Stixrud, co-author of the national best-seller The Self-Driven Child, returns to discuss his new book, What Do You Say? How to Talk with Kids to Build Stress Tolerance, Motivation, and a Happy Home.

Dr. Stixrud explores the impact of communication and consequences as he shares from his book—a practical guide for talking to kids about:

• sleep,
• screen time,
• motivation,
• and living up to their potential. 

Dr. Stixrud is a clinical psychologist and faculty member at Children’s National Medical Center and George Washington University School of Medicine. He lectures widely on the adolescent brain, meditation, and the effects of stress, sleep deprivation, and technology overload on the brain. He co-wrote the national best seller The Self-Driven Child and the recently-released What Do You Say: How to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home with Ned Johnson. He’s been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and more. 

His previous Master Class webinar in Brave Learner Home is our #1 most watched guest webinar.

He’s also a rock and roll musician, and he’s back for an encore presentation in Brave Learner Home! 

“How we feel about our kids isn’t as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.” ―Alfie Kohn

How do we get our kids to do what we want them to do? What we need them to do? 

To homeschool well, don’t we need a certain number of problems in math, at least a minimal amount of reading each day, and a bit of writing, so we’ll have papers that show their progress? Let’s throw in piano practice, too!

Why is it so hard to get them to do it?

Getting our kids to meet our expectations feels so important in homeschooling! Yet what we often get from them is their reluctance and resistance—mixed in with our own resentment. This is not how we thought homeschooling would look or feel! 

So let’s flip the script and ask instead: What lies beneath our kids’ behavior? 

The secret to answering that question? Considering your child’s perspective! And that’s a powerful way to transform the daily life of your homeschool. 

Your Child’s Perspective!

In this Brave Learner Home Master Class, we read parts of Alfie Kohn’s Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason. This will give us a jumping off point to explore ideas for working with our children rather than doing things to them.

Exploring your child’s perspective will help you understand them better, so they can learn more!

Check out the ways to sign up for a FREE Lifetime Membership to the Brave Learner Home. Join me for our webinar October 20 to learn more about the power of considering your child’s perspective!