Archive for the ‘One Thing’ Category

Introducing: One Thing!

Brave Writer presents: The “One Thing” Series

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the good homeschooling advice available today. Homeschool can quickly become a slog through “wonderful ideas” rather than the inspired, natural rhythm and routine that fosters a love of learning and healthy educational growth in your kids. Good ideas abound, but they are only as “good” as they are satisfying to parent and child in the application of them to our lives.

To help overwhelmed mothers, I’ve often suggested that they focus on “one thing” at a time. Pick a practice or event or strategy that is appealing, that you believe in, that you hope to bring into your family life and focus on it. Plan for it (learn what it is and how it’s done), prepare for it (get the right materials, set aside the right amount of time, talk enthusiastically about it with your kids), execute it (with the phone turned off, with your full attention in the moment, not rushing ahead to what you’ll do when this event is over), give it all the time it needs (until interest flags). Then clean up and before doing something else the next day, reminisce about the event/project/activity. Then try it again, in a few days or a week later. Once you have begun to see a routine practice develop into an effortless part of your life (or at least, not painful or agitating), it’s time to add something new again.

One thing.

You can develop a pleasing homechool routine “one thing” at a time.

True to our philosophy, we’ve decided to offer a series of short, one-month classes that feature “one thing” at a time.

The Brave Writer Lifestyle includes experiences like art appreciation, nature walks, freewriting, dictation and copywork, poetry enjoyment and writing, revision of one writing project per month, grammar study through games and interaction with real literature. Rather than sending you off to invent how to do these all on your own, the Brave Writer team is heading up short, intensive workshops to help you develop the skills and creative applications for each of these ideas, one thing at a time.

One Thing: Copywork and Dictation
Our first one-month session starts October 8 and features an in-depth treatment of copywork and dictation. Rita Cevasco, Brave Writer instructor and professional speech pathologist, will teach this month-long workshop. Families with children who struggle with language processing disorders are especially encouraged to sign up as Rita’s expertise makes her an invaluable resource for the mom wanting to help her language impaired student.

However, these kids are not the only ones who will benefit from Rita’s instruction. This course is designed to show any family how to maximize the values of copywork and dictation in ways you haven’t thought of before. If you’re new to copywork and dictation or you want someone to hold your hand in showing you how to take advantage of great literature to teach language arts naturally, this is the perfect setting for you.

For families committed to copywork and dictation as the primary tools of language arts (grammar, spelling, punctuation, literary elements, and handwriting), this four-week course will take you a good distance in establishing copywork and dictation as regular practices in your homeschool (and will help you past the anxiety that drives you keep those workbooks stashed in a closet as a back-up plan).

Included in the course: One issue of the Arrow and one issue of the Boomerang (you will decide which level to use for each child during class; both will be provided).

Tuition is: $99.00 (per family)

The tuition is per family as you will be doing the work with your children at home and therefore can apply anything you learn to any number of kids. In other words, we’re offering you a real deal in terms of tuition!

Registration opens Wednesday. I’ll post a link here and on the home page of the website. Hope you’ll join us!

If you have any questions, please post them here in the comments, or email me.

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One More Thing about One Thing

One Thing Principle

How can you fit the “new and cool ideas” into an already full life?

A recurring question about the “one-thing” principle is how to fit everything in if we start moving that slowly in homeschool. In other words, if I take time for tea and poetry and it uses up most of my Tuesday, and then if I focus on copywork the next day and make that a joy and a success on Wednesday, and then Thursday, we read four chapters of the novel we are now savoring, and finally on Friday, we have a rousing good time doing a Friday Freewrite where we prepare to write, write and then share the writing with each other… when will we ever get back to math or science or history?

Just as you’ve taken the time to really savor those literary experiences, you will want to do the same with math, science or history. There will possibly be that time when you put your Brave Writer Lifestyle practices on the back burner for a day as you focus on math (for a morning! not just for two pages). You might find that your BW practices bleed over into other subjects.

For instance, what if you decided to really prepare for a morning of math. You look ahead to the concepts and find games that reinforce the concept. You might find a library book that shows how the concept works. You might mosey over to the website Living Math which gives you practical ways to make math relevant.

Then the morning comes and you have a math tea party. Perhaps while you play the game, do the math page, read the living math book, you drink tea and eat some brownies. Maybe you divide the brownies up into 1/16ths and talk about how you did that.

Learning to do One Thing enriches the overall experience.

The point is that as you give yourself to one experience fully, you will discover how the way you prepared, the way you executed, the methods you used for enhancing the experience actually transfer to any of your educational objectives. Additionally, you will learn more in these highly focused moments because your full attention will be directed into that activity (rather than divided).

Learning to give yourself fully to one thing at a time, for a time,
enhances the overall experience.

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You might make copywork about a math principle, you might have your kids narrate about history, you might suggest they write about a science experiment, your children might read poems about the natural world, they might drink tea and light candles to play Sudoku!

You might find that the “one-on-one time” reminder in the Brave Writer Lifestyle means that you spend one-on-one time with the child who needs to learn his multiplication tables. Perhaps you throw a baseball back and forth with just that child to practice them. Or perhaps one-on-one time can be used to read one book with one child.

Take these principles and use them to augment all of your aims for homeschool. Stop doing what makes you and your children miserable. If they are unhappy, rethink the subject/assignment/goal and find a way to change it.

Ask these questions:

  • Would he be more able to handwrite if I did it with him?
  • Would tasty snacks during math help?
  • Would she be more alert if we read the science book outside?
  • Would it help if I rubbed his shoulders first?
  • Is there a game online that demonstrates this principle?
  • Do any of my friends understand X better than I do? How do they teach it?
  • Has anyone written a quality book about this subject (novel or compelling non-fiction)? Can we start there instead of the dry workbook?

Take it “one thing” at a time and slowly modify what you do with your children to create momentum that leads to joy and immersion in the topic/practice. Enter into it yourself.

Taking it one slice at a time….

The One Thing Principle

 

If you want to keep reading more about One Thing and how the practice can impact your homeschool approach, click on the one piece of cake or read the category by clicking here.

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One Thing Principle: Use What You Have

One Thing Principle: Use What You Have
In thinking about the One Thing Principle, I recalled my experience as a missionary in Morocco.

Missionaries come from the first world, but many of them live in the second or third world. In other words, they know what they’re missing.

What that means is that they cherish any little token of home that they can’t run down to the local shop to buy.

So for instance, when someone sends a can of oatmeal, that baby is meted out in teaspoons to be sure none is wasted. You won’t find left over oatmeal sitting in a pan congealing until it’s scooped into the garbage pail at the end of the day. By golly, that oatmeal will be eaten right away or stirred into oatmeal bread dough to be eaten later.

Likewise, a few tubes of fabric paint will be used until they are dried up and rinsed out with water for the final residue of color.

Books in English are passed around through the “missionary lending library” (meaning traveling missionaries will schlep books in their bags from city to city via the “missionary trade route” to be sure that everyone gets a chance to read the great books that they can’t get in their towns).

One Thing Principle: Use What You Have

How does all this apply to the One Thing Principle?

What I discovered on the field is that we milked “one thing” for all of its value. We didn’t simply taste it and rush off to the next thing. One of my missionary friends shared with me that she used one book of crafts for six months with her kids. They did every single project in the book. That was the only book they had! Have you ever done that?

Think about how much fun it would be to actually use the books we already own, to follow each page and not flit away to the next idea before thoroughly enjoying the one in front of us?

If we have a problem in America, it’s that we have an abundance of good ideas and materials clamoring for our attention all the time. That means we never quite delve all the way into what we already have.

So for the next few months, think like a missionary. What Brave Writer-y thing have you already got in your home that you can thoroughly use up before moving on to the next thing?

My suggestion: Do that!

P.S. The One Thing Principle is a great remedy for times of overwhelm as well, as explained in this broadcast. 

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