A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Implementation of Brave Writer

Brave Writer is a writing philosophy designed to inspire kids to share their ideas. My favorite Brave Writer product The Writer’s Jungle teaches educators how to teach writing while keeping motivation high.

It’s full of tips for reviewing written works and offering suggestions for improvement. In addition, the activity ideas increase vocabulary and creativity with words. Teaching writing becomes more fun after implementing the program.

The part I struggled with was how long to spend revising works. My son and I wrote a paper together, but it seemed to take way to long to complete. There were numerous issues with his writing such as organization, and complete sentences. To me it was important to address them all. My 13 year old daughter could easily freewrite stories that were many pages long. In fact, she wrote ten chapters. The volume of output from her was impressive, but tackling a ten chapter book for revision was a daunting task. We pushed through it, but it was too big for her level of writing.

Enter my friend April. I recommend Brave Writer to April, and she loved it. A few months after using it, she described her implementation of the philosophy. Well it was brilliant, so now I use her implementation too. Here’s how it works…read more. ~Highhill Education

Homeschool wanderings: writing and grammar edition

I’m finding here at the end of six years of doing this thing called home-based education that I’m a little burned out on the way we’ve been doing things. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe boredom/burnout/stress is inevitable. I don’t know. All I know is that long about the time of the February Slump I found myself just pushing my girls through some of their work. Much of it felt disconnected, too–we had separate writing curricula and separate grammar curricula, and we were always reading aloud a lot, especially just good literature and history, so it seemed like surely some of that could be combined somehow. Additionally, the curriculum I was using with Lulu is excellent, and she was doing okay with it, but she was not engaged with it much at all. Besides that, I truly feel like it was enough above her head that she would benefit from it more when she’s a little older. I felt like they were jumping through my hoops on most days with very little investment on their part, and that’s not what I want for their educations at all. Enter Brave Writer…read more. ~Amy, Hope is the Word

112 Days of Brave Writer

I recently bought and read The Writer’s Jungle…I told myself I would just read it on the computer, but I can’t stand reading on-screen for very long. So I printed it. Wow. I loved many of the ideas in it and was pretty excited to get started-but TWJ doesn’t contain a whole lot of nitty gritty how-to-get-it-done type info. Last year, we tried out several ideas from Julie’s Brave Writer Lifestyle, which were a big hit with the kids. I wanted to continue our favorites from BWL and try out some new things from TWJ.

I came up with a list of 112 Brave Writer activities to do this school year, which works out to about three per week. I will add “Bravewriter” to my loop plan and we will work our way through the list as time permits…read more. ~Kim, Our Enchanted Place

We hope to share more roundups in the future! If you write about an aspect of the Brave Writer Lifestyle, let us know! Email your post’s url to Jeannette, our Social Media admin ([email protected]). Thanks!

Using Copywork to Teach Grammar and Spelling

I could have entitled this post “oh, so that’s how you do Copywork!” – Maybe I’m just slow on the uptake and this is going to be old news to most; it was, however, a bit of a revelation to me when I discovered how copywork could be used as an effective means to teach not just spelling but also grammar, punctuation and the literary elements of writing. I also picked up some great tips on how to make it work for a struggling reader and writer. ~A Pilgrim’s Heart

Brave Writer Review

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

I have an enthusiastic writer and a reluctant writer and I really want to encourage both of them in their individual learning journeys.

I chanced upon Brave Writer when I was in search of some inspiration to help me teach my kids how to write. What I found was not a curriculum but an approach to writing that started to help me formulate a clearer view of what I wanted for my kids. ~A Pilgrim’s Heart

Brave Writer – Our Family Diary

Daily blog posts about one family’s journey:

This is a personal record of our daily brave writing. I thought it would be helpful for others to see a family venture into this wonderful program for the first time. ~Shauna, Eco Educational

Living Learning Lists

If home educators applied a Brave Writer Lifestyle to other subjects:

I am a long-time fan of the Bravewriter Lifestyle List. I love the ideas in it and how an entire language arts experience can be built on a few rich, real-life routines.

I have often thought, wouldn’t it be amazing to have a list like that for all the subjects? What if instead of following a curriculum all the time, there was a way to help worried moms spread a feast of learning ideas in the home — in addition to using a curriculum or in place of using it. ~Pam at edShapshots

The Storybook Village

An example of narrating through creating storybook villages:

When we built our storybook village back in 2011, I had no idea it would grow to become one of our favorite winter traditions. Camille was 4 or 5 at the time and it was a fun way to create spaces those characters who dominated her imagination and lived in books that had to be read again and again. Each year we pull out the village and Camille adds new elements…new literary neighbors, snow men, trees, etc. ~Dim Sum, Bagels, and Crawfish

Image by Brave Writer mom, Carmen (tinted, text added)

Things We Love: Brave Writer

Last year writing in my home was met with tantrums. It was killing our homeschool. Master Builder has a motor delay. She never crawled and has little upper body strength. This makes writing painful physically and mentally. You add into that the expectations of a mom who used to dream of being a writer and graduated at the top of her class and you will have a recipe for disaster. I was ready to throw in the towel last year but then at the end of year party someone asked if we knew about Brave Writer, because we seemed like we would be a “Brave Writer Family”. I had never heard of it before but was blown away by how much it resembled my philosophy of learning-(which I myself had lost sight of in last year’s disappointments). ~Jamie, Today’s Field Trip

women who inspire :: Julie Bogart

an easy way to add a bit of poetry into your homeschool is to institute a weekly Poetry Tea.  just imagine gathering the children to a table loaded with cups of tea with milk, a little something sweet to eat, and a stack of poetry books.  you might read some favorites, then they might want to get in on the act too.  sounds wonderful, right?  we’ve got Julie Bogart of Brave Writer fame to thank! ~Kort, one deep drawer

And three posts from Tristan:

Most of Writing is About Relationship – What I Learned at a Brave Writer Seminar

Yesterday I took a little 3 hour drive down to Cincinnati for some teacher development. Julie Bogart of Brave Writer spent 3 lovely hours sharing and encouraging a group of moms and dads in this homeschooling journey…The focus of the seminar was writing but in my notes I have all sorts of nuggets of wisdom captured. As this blog is part journal I want to record them here. Hopefully you find something helpful as well! ~Tristan, Our Busy Homeschool

A Writing Project from Start to Finish with Brave Writer

Today I’m excited to share a writing piece from one of my children because it really showcases one way Brave Writer has impacted our homeschool. Makayla is my 13 year old 8th grader. She has some long-term writing projects going on including a novel and a group pass along story with several friends (you get the story for 3 days to write all you want, then pass it along to the next person).

The Poetry Teatime Where I Break Most of the Rules

When I first heard of doing poetry teatime as part of the Brave Writer Lifestyle I put it off because it would never match the ideal picture I see in my head. Last year I decided that I would no longer be paralyzed by my perfectionist tendencies. My children did not care if things were perfect, they simply wanted togetherness. Nowadays I move forward and enjoy our imperfect poetry teatimes, breaking most of the rules from my imagined ideal.

Image by Brave Writer mom, Tracey (cc) cropped/text added