Archive for the ‘Brave Writer Philosophy’ Category

It’s Autumn! Time to do fall stuff.

25 Homeschool Ideas for Fall

We made a list of things to do in the summer and one of our BW moms asked me to make one for fall.

  1. Of course buy pumpkins and carve/decorate them. You can use those big quilting pins to pierce the pumpkins so that you can cut colored paper and pin ears, eyes, mouths, if you prefer (a Mr. Pumpkin Head ala Mr. Potato Head).
  2. Make a chart that tracks the color changes of leaves on one of your trees. Sharpie mark several leaves with numerals. Then each day, record how the colors change for each one. Do you see speckles? Streaks? Shading shifts from left to right or top to bottom? Bring your colored pencils and compare colors to the leaves and then name the colors (goldenrod, chartreuse, ruby).
  3. Serve hot apple cider during your teatime/poetry for the months of October and November.
  4. Rake leaves for a neighbor while that neighbor is at work. Leave pumpkin muffins and an anonymous note. Don’t ever say who raked the yard.
  5. Jump on the trampoline and take flying photos.
  6. Hike to a creek with your dog.
  7. Stay out late and look at the moon once per week. Draw it and notice how the shape changes over the course of a month.
  8. Borrow a telescope and find Saturn.
  9. Create a nature’s table where you collect and display fall-ish items: acorns, acorn hats, moss on bark, dried colored leaves, scented candles, little pumpkins or gourds, blond hay stalks, dried corn, pebbles. We like to add little figurines like Half Penny Dolls. Lego figures work too.
  10. Read and write poems about the fall.
  11. Use sidewalk chalk to create hopscotch (look up various versions on the Internet and try them all).
  12. Volunteer at a homeless shelter and serve.
  13. Roast marshmallows in the fireplace.
  14. Peel an apple in one long peel using a pocket knife.
  15. Bake pies (try new ones like rhubarb, or old ones in a new way – pumpkin using a real pie pumpkin, not canned).
  16. Shake whipping cream in a glass jar with a marble until it become butter. Take turns shaking during read aloud time.
  17. Dye fabric with natural foods: beets to make purples, red onions for reds, tumeric for yellows. Muslin works great. You can make bean bags or little quilted pot holders with the resulting fabrics.
  18. Find out how to play cornhole. (Cincinnati specialty!) Then make one and try it.
  19. Take a bird watching hike (bring binoculars and a field guide). You can sometimes sign up at local nature preserves or parks too.
  20. Toss the old pigskin around!
  21. Buy a candle making kit and make the candles (or paper making or soap making).
  22. Clean the messiest space in your house, then scent the room with lavender.
  23. Spend an evening eating popcorn, drinking cider, and reading silently as a family in front of the fire. Turn the TV off.
  24. Go to a local festival.
  25. Invite college students or adults living alone to an evening of soup, bread and games (like Apples to Apples). Fall is a great time to care for shut ins or kids who have moved away from home.

Posted in Activities, Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice | 1 Comment »

Shift the Power

Balancing perspectives

Remember: the best educational environment is one where everyone is moving in the same direction, with similar levels of enthusiasm. Not everyone has to “love” writing, but it helps if resistance is lowered. So let’s work on that!

Power Dynamics in Home Education

Let’s talk about the power dynamics in families. There’s no question “who’s in charge” in a family. Kids know. Parents know. Adults carry the responsibility so they have the power.

Knowing we are in charge, we often use that power to run our families and homeschools. We set out the expectations of what is to be done and then we expect respectful cooperation. When our kids don’t share the same goals and don’t have the same instincts, many parents assume the child is in rebellion or is willful. (Books have been written to illustrate this point.)

Kids who don’t share the same goals or perspective, instead, will assume their parents are mean and don’t understand kids. (Kids wish they had written books to illustrate this point.)

There is an imbalance between the perspectives of parents and children (one has books with studies to support its viewpoint and the other doesn’t—all kids have is whining, crying, ignoring and acts of passive aggression). This imbalance can create havoc for the homeschooling parent who hopes her child will write one day. Kids might believe that the parent’s insistence that they write is another one of those power-plays designed to meet adult needs while ignoring the viewpoints of children.

When one group experiences itself as marginalized (not able to express its views in a way that makes contact with the powers-that-be and causes change) and the other group experiences itself as in power with the ability to coerce compliance, crankiness has the chance to fester and develop into full-blown rage or disinterested passivity (the “I surrender” stance).

For some reason, working on writing causes the power struggle to show its full colors. Kids have a knack for resisting parental input when it’s related to the writing they do. Their writing is the one space that children try to protect from parental control—writing equals “who I am” and as a result, they want their writing to be accepted as is, punctuation mistakes and spelling errors included.

If we want to see crankiness replaced by joy (since it is my contention that joy is the best teacher there is), we have to shift the power dynamics. We need to hear our marginalized poor, our “oh-so-powerless” kids. We have to “divest” ourselves of our power and serve our kids.

Here are some sure fire ways to move from first to last so your kids can move from last to first:

1) Apologize.

I remember at one seminar encouraging the parents to rub their kids’ shoulders before a freewrite. A mom’s hand shot into the air. She couldn’t believe it! Just that morning, her son had asked her to rub his shoulders, before he started writing. She told him, “This is school. This is not play time. I’m not rubbing your shoulders. You should get to work and stop dilly-dallying.” Lightbulb! She suddenly saw. Unwittingly, she had undermined his success in writing that morning. Say you’re sorry. Then start over, together.

2) Take the same risks your kids take.

When they write, you write. Freewrite once in awhile when they do. Risk sharing your writing so that they can hear and read it. Respect and honor the process you are asking them to engage in. You will sympathize with their efforts if you have experienced the same kinds of blocks and blanks that they experience with writing from time to time. And the biggest bonus of all: you’ll learn how you break through stuck places so you can share those insights with your kids.

3) Ask permission.

Your child is not just a writer, but an author. Authors deserve final control over their writing. Let your child know that the input you offer is optional and that you won’t give unwanted input. Discuss artistic choices. Then let the writer decide which of these artistic choices she prefers to make. If you take this approach with all writing (personal, academic, assigned), over time your child will come to value and ask for your input. Trust me.

4) Ask for your child’s writing goals.

Your child may tell you up front that he has no goals for writing. If that is the case, you can share the goals you have for your writing… and then pursue them, right in front of your child. “Wait honey. I’m working on that piece about gardening for my online community, remember? I’ll be right with you. Hey can you listen a minute—how does this sound?” I know you have goals for your children’s writing. We’ll discuss that at another time. Right now we are working toward unhooking the power struggle.

If your child has goals (such as, wanting to start a live journal or wants to write a short story or is interested in learning how to write poetry in calligraphy), talk about ways that you can support your child in reaching those goals. Do they need more time on the computer? Do they need a book about story writing? Can you purchase a set of pens and offer a book of poems with which to practice their calligraphy?

5) Make writing opportunities interesting.

If writing has become a curse instead of a joy, take a break from writing. Read, talk, read, talk, watch movies, read, talk. Then pick a surprising writing activity. Of course a new freewriting prompt left on an empty kitchen table with brand new colored pens and pretty paper sometimes jump starts the reluctant writer as well. Don’t say anything. Just leave it all out and see what happens. Jump in the car and bring journals along. Write at a coffee shop, all of you, together. Change the setting and you’ll change the attitude.

If you shift the power dynamic in your home—giving up some of your power so that those without power get some—you’ll see a shift in the level of joy in your home. It may take some time before they trust that you are truly divesting (not just manipulating them). You have to let go of outcomes and not see this as a strategy. But once they believe you—that you are unequivocally on their side and they know it—they will trust you to give input into their writing and to even make some suggestions of what kinds of writing they may want to attempt or learn.

What an honor to be the one to foster that kind of home environment!

The Homeschool Alliance

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy | 2 Comments »

Why Poetry?

Why Poetry

Why poetry?

Lots of parents are intimidated by poetry. They feel inadequate (imagining that poets hide mysteries within their rhymes) to plumb the depths sufficiently for insight and meaning, thinking their kids will not “get it” either. High school poetry units often left many of us scratching our heads rather than savoring language.

In the homeschool, you get to reclaim poetry as a legitimate tool of language arts. Poetry is all about the words: choices, sounds, relationships, punch. Poetry aims to get a message/story across within limits: meter, rhyme, alliteration or assonance (or both!), stanzas, numbers of words. It’s the Sudoku of language!

Here are the ways I recommend you dip your toes into the stream of poetic expression:

1. Read it.

Don’t worry about meanings, themes, alliteration, rhyme schemes or meter. Simply let the words roll around in your mouth. Read the poem and ignore the temptation to wonder at it. Let yourself feel the words. You might only react positively to a word pair or one ending rhyme. That’s perfectly fine! In poems that don’t offer up their meanings easily, start with reading and letting yourself connect to whatever it is that draws your attention. (If nothing does, it’s fine to move on to the next poem. No need to squeeze “blood from a turnip.” You might “get it” some other year.) Also, read it through multiple times before you render a judgment. Poems benefit from multiple readings.

2. Listen to it.

As you read it aloud (or as the poem is read to you), listen to the sounds. Ignore meanings completely. What stands out? Rhyme? Repeated vowel sounds (assonance)? Repeated initial consonant sounds (alliteration)? Repeated consonant sounds throughout the line or poem (consonance)? How about interesting word uses (a noun acting as a verb, or a made-up word like you’ll find in Carroll or cummings)? Is there a rhythm you can anticipate? Can you beat your hand to the sounds – the accented syllables versus the ones that don’t make you slap your leg? Is there a pattern (each line starts with “I wish…” or ends with “…and so it goes”)?

3. Listen to it for word choices.

In addition to noting the sounds, note the word choices. Are there surprises (words used in ways you wouldn’t ordinarily think of them)? Are they plain words (nothing special except they all go together in an interesting way)? Do you find yourself thinking about the way a word is used? Does the poet focus on concrete experiences or metaphor or something else? Is it funny? Why? Puns? Irony? Punchline humor?

4. Meaning or theme?

Now we get down to the point of writing the poem. What’s it about? You can be as superficial as you want. Just get the gist. Consult your kids if you feel stuck. They are surprisingly insightful. Figure out if the poem paints a picture of an emotion or experience, or if it is detailing a story or telling an idea. Perhaps it is commenting on a theme such as patriotism or friendship or love or autumn.

5. Do you like it?

Guess what? No right answers here. If you find it inscrutable, hard to read aloud, beyond your reach intellectually, of course you won’t like it and you don’t have to. It may be that you aren’t the right audience or it could be that you haven’t yet cultivated your poetic “sensibility” enough to get this more sophisticated poem. Remember: there are just some arenas where depth supports understanding (algebra and calculus are two of them; poetry is another). So if it so happens that you can’t appreciate some famous poem all your teachers told you was the best in its genre in 1762, that’s okay! You’re not there yet and you don’t need to be.

When you read poetry with kids, choose books that are high on rhyme, humor and concrete experiences. You’ll know they like it if they want to keep reading more from the same book. If they don’t, pack it up. Send it back to the library and go to the next book. The goal here is enjoyment of language. So many good (subconscious) things are going on in your head and in your kids’ heads when they play with poetry. Serve tea, cookies and a big side of optimism and your poetry experiences will become the highlight of your week. Trust me. I’ve seen it happen thousands of times.

Share favorite poetry books in the comments or ask me questions (or tell your story!). I’d love to hear from you.

Poetry Teatime

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Poetry, Tips for Teen Writers, Young Writers | 6 Comments »

Stop! You don’t have to write every day…

Interact with writing every day

You don’t have to write every day to become a great writer. The old adage: “Write every day” doesn’t apply to your kids. Truth is, it doesn’t even apply to all adult professionals! Writing every day is one of the great writing myths. There is some value to journaling or setting up a daily routine that requires you to write, inspired or not.  And plenty of writers trumpet this practice as a result. The value in the routine is that it helps writers (that is, people who are already proficient at handwriting or typing, who’ve been getting paid for their word counts, who want their vocation or hobby to be writing) get over the usual blocks that come with required creative output. But even adults sometimes need breaks, need time to muse or be still or to simply read for awhile rather than produce.

You’re working with kids. Your kids. Your kidlets who can’t remember how to make a cursive “r,” who still struggle with even spacing between words, who forget that the faint pink line on the right indicates a margin that they must respect by not running it over with letters. These are the writers for whom generating original writing can become the most blocking, anxiety-producing activity of the day—the difference between cheerfulness and tears.

The Brave Writer philosophy says instead:
Interact with writing every day.

That means you can read it, copy it, listen to it being read, or analyze the writing you read. Look at it for why it works: makes you laugh, hooks your attention, delights you, persuades you; look at it for how it’s structured, why it’s whatever length it is, what support is used for its points, the musicality of the language, and so on. You can read writing for the sheer joy of it. Inside your mind, little grooves of how good writing feels and sounds are established so that as you return to your original writing, you find yourself unconsciously imitating those sounds, rhythms and forms.

Give your kids and yourself a break. Read, read, read. Count it as part of your writing program. When you write, let it be from a place of overflow and energy. Freewriting once a week or working on a project per month is the way to keep original writing on the menu of things to do each week. But never let them take over. Interact with writing every day. That’s the Brave Writer mantra.

Learn more about Brave Writer products

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General | 1 Comment »

Save the last letter…

Years ago, my mom gave me a piece of advice I want to pass onto you. When you receive any written communication (particularly a handwritten note, card, or letter) from one of your family members (kids, sure, but especially aging parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles), save it. Put it in a file until the next one comes. Always keep the last note you’ve received (even if it’s mundane or only has the words, “Talk to you soon. Love, Mom”). If, by unhappy mischance, your mother dies, you’ll have her most recent communication to you, in her own hand. There’s something about being able to know that you have a handwritten note, particularly from a parent, after that parent dies that brings comfort in a way that other mementos (even photos) don’t.

I remember sitting in my aunt’s living room with a stack of letters my grandfather wrote to my grandmother during their several years in the nursing home. My grandfather had died several years earlier and now my grandmother had passed on. As we read his annual love letters aloud, tears streamed from our cheeks. Not all sad ones either! Sometimes we burst out laughing, too, as my grandfather’s personality echoed through my voice while I read his writing. The treasure of his recent words, his affection for my grandmother, the comfort of seeing his fountain pen cursive curl across the page, made us feel like he was hovering above in the space my grandmother had only recently entered. I felt the community of our family in that living room, deep in tri-folded vanilla stationary.

I also save last emails or any communication that expresses love, pride in me or a moving expression of that person’s affection for me or our family.  Writing brings a unique comfort and connection to someone you love and lost. If you save what they write, you can return to those expressions when you hit that low that requires a parent’s support and care. If your parents aren’t those people in your life, save the writing of the person who does that for you! It matters to have writing to reread, to return to. Words are sacred, and when they come from the heart of someone who loves you, they have magical powers to heal, empower and nurture.

In The Writer’s Jungle, I share the story of a friend’s son who died of leukemia at age 19. He left behind journals that became a cherished source of connection for his parents; they were gifted with a way to hear from him even after he was gone. Writing outlives us. It’s the one thing that really does and still reflects us as we really were. Writing communicates who we are. It also has the advantage of conveying those thoughts and ideas with authority. Put it in writing, and we believe it.

So as you think about all that writing you’re requiring from your kids this year, remember: keep their voices in it, help them to recognize its value, love what they offer you (whether it’s a short couple of sentences churned out because they do what you say, or a genuine act of spontaneous word play that streams from the end of their pencils). Save it. Write to them. Write to your parents. Save what your parents write back. Cultivate a life where writing is valued, even beyond this life, and slowly but surely, you’ll discover that you’re not teaching writing, after all. You’re teaching each of your children and your family members to value what lives inside us enough to save it, to preserve, to share it… in fact, you’re teaching them to write it down.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Family Notes | 3 Comments »