For families with kids ages 5-15!

The Summer Games in Paris, France are right around the corner.

Are you ready for the BEST news?

We have a treat for you! 

We’ve created the Brave Writer Guide to the 2024 Summer Games and done all of the planning so you don’t have to!

This 18-page celebration of the Games is filled with:

• book lists (including a few Arrow and Boomerang titles)
• writing activities
• STEM inspiration 
• ideas for arts and crafts 
• Big Juicy Conversation topics for both teens and the younger crowd
• art and music appreciation
• trivia links and prompts
• nature study ideas
• games inspired by the Games
• Poetry Teatime inspiration and booklists
• Paralympic links and prompts 
• medals for hands-on play and decoration
• memories ready for the making!

Let’s get ready to support the athletes who’ve worked so hard to make it to the Games!

• XXXIII Summer Olympic Games: Friday, July 26, 2024 – Sunday, August 11, 2024
• 2024 Paris Paralympic Games: Wednesday, August 28, 2024 – Sunday, September 8, 2024

Mark your calendar and grab your guide to the Games NOW!

What do Quest for Camelot, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, and Castle in the Sky have in common?

We’re watching (and maybe even reading!) each movie in Brave Writer’s online MOVIE DISCUSSION CLUB!

Reading? A movie?

A recent Brave Writer Instagram post (pic above) got us thinking!

Invite MOVIES to do the reading aloud!

Turning on subtitles (even for an English-language film) has a heap of benefits!

• Experience dialogue in a new way, sometimes even before a character opens their mouth. Start laughing in advance, then turn your attention to the actor’s delivery.
• Catch all the bits of dialogue —deepening your understanding of the overall storyline and how the characters are feeling. No more missed whispers or rewatching scenes to keep up!
• Track character names with ease.
• Utilize the added visual cues of subtitles to catch tricky terminology or hard-to-pronounce words.
• Keep tabs on a complex storyline.  Subtitles can offer clues about the scene’s mood or how a character feels (ominous music playing, for example). 

Hold juicy subtitle discussions with your kids. Did that music feel ominous to them? Is there a better adjective to use? Does the character’s facial expression match their dialogue? Could they have strengthened their delivery? How?

As you watch each film together, you could even turn the sound off and read the subtitles aloud to your kids. Or take turns reading them!

• What visual clues help you decide how to deliver a line?
• How do the different characters speak—hesitantly? Confidently?
• Does a character’s tone change according to who they are talking to and what is going on around them?

You won’t fall asleep during this read-aloud!

Join us in Brave Writer’s Movie Club to watch (and perhaps read!) fabulous films.

Give your kids the chance to surprise you!

It’s too easy to wave off a child who is excited to show you something when you’re in the middle of something else.

STOP.

Drop what you’re doing to be interested.

Smile, look, say things like:

• “That’s cool!”
• “I didn’t know that.”
• “What else?”

Check your face for patience and openness.

This usually only requires a few minutes of attention, but yields a happier child who feels SEEN. If you don’t see them when they’re eager, they may get your attention by other less enjoyable means.

So be interested in your kids. You have more time in the summer or on break. Practice now while the pressure is off!

This post is originally from Instagram and @juliebravewriter is my account there so come follow along for more conversations like this one!

In a world of AI, your original voice is even more powerful than ever. The handwritten card becomes a keepsake, the thoughtful letter or email that identifies details only you know, matters more than ever. Never underestimate the power of your own voice! Even if it is less perfectly spelled or even articulated—it comes from a living source: YOU.

Ever since someone mentioned the idea that artificial intelligence could write on our behalf, the world has gone bonkers trying to decide if that’s a good thing or a horrible no good very bad thing.

Understandably, writers are nervous. So are teachers.

OTOH…

Students who hate writing are THRILLED!
Marketers and entrepreneurs are LOVING IT!

Is writing over?

It’s not. But this new technology is here to stay and it has some powerful uses. Think of it a bit like a calculator or Adobe In Design. It’s a tool that has the capacity to launch more writing, more prolifically. But to use it well, one actually does need to know a thing of two about writing.

AND—writing from scratch still has supreme value. The trick is: the person who writes has to value writing. That’s where Brave Writer excels. From the beginning, I’ve been obsessed with kids learning to write because their words matter and they get to express them so that an interested audience (you) values them.

The reason students are turning to ChatGPT in droves is that they haven’t yet had the experience of their own writing voices mattering. They write for teachers and grades. They don’t write to self express or know their own thinking or to explore an idea.

In Brave Writer, that’s what we do every single day—demonstrate how valuable a child’s inner life and thought world actually is. ChatGPT can never replace the thoughts YOU have about a topic. But if you don’t think your thoughts are good, why work so hard to think and write them?

Do you have teens? Kirsten and Jen did a massively powerful webinar on this topic, particularly for high schoolers. Check it out!

When the way things are is too costly to your well-being than the way things could be if you blew up your life to expand your choices, you’ll change course.

Big choices feel big because they are. They alter how you see yourself.

• Putting your kids in school or pulling them out.
• Staying married or getting a divorce.
• Going to grad school or putting it off.
• Doing chemo or stopping it.
• Moving away from your family or moving back to be near them.
• Staying in your religious faith or leaving it.
• Exploring a new perspective or doubling down on the one you have.
• Having another baby or stopping.
• Working outside the home or being a SAHM.
• Giving up an addiction…

You’ll know when you know.

You deserve to lead a life that gives you hope.

You deserve as good a life as the one you want for your children.

One question that helped me was: “If I were to counsel one of my kids about this issue once they’re an adult, how would I lean?”

One idea that helped me: “You get to keep making choices. This isn’t the last one you’ll ever make.”

Keep going. Rooting for you.

No one changes course until the tipping point. It’s okay if the tipping point hasn’t yet tipped. Be patient. You’ll know when you know. You’ll move in the direction of your hope and release at the right time for you.

This post is originally from Instagram and @juliebravewriter is my account
so come follow along for more conversations like this one!