Archive for the ‘Podcasts’ Category

[Podcast #315] The 8 Stages of Homeschooling

Brave Writer Podcast

How do we move from “I think I want to homeschool” to “We’ve created an education that fits us”?

In this Brave Writer podcast episode, we walk through the eight natural stages homeschool parents experience, from jumping in without a clue, to swapping curriculum in search of the “perfect” program, to finally trusting ourselves and embracing “us schooling.”

We share real stories from our own homeschools, talk about ideological pressure from methods and social media, and offer practical ideas for planning from behind and building a routine you can bend without breaking.

Tune in to discover your stage and what might come next, and then join us to share where you are in your journey!

Show Notes

The longer we homeschool, the more we realize that we’re not just teaching our kids—we’re growing up as educators right alongside them. No one hands us a diploma that says “qualified homeschool parent.” Instead, we move through a series of stages, slowly gaining confidence in our ability to craft an education that fits our families.

Getting Started: Jumping In

Many of us start with a rush of enthusiasm. We catch a glimpse of what home education could be—through a book, a podcast, an Instagram account, or the chaos of online schooling—and we jump in. We buy the books, order the curriculum, and suddenly our children are looking at us like, “Okay, how does this work?” That feeling of being underprepared is not a sign you’re failing; it’s often the first stage of growth.

Recreating What We Know

From there, it’s natural to “play school.” We recreate the classroom we remember: bulletin boards, workbooks lined up in magazine files, color-coded schedules. We’re trying to make learning look official, because that’s what we know. Over time, though, we notice a gap between the tidy plan and the messy reality of family life. Someone melts down, someone’s sick, someone’s building an elaborate Lego world during read-aloud time—and, secretly, we’d rather join them than fight it.

Exploring Methods

That’s when we often discover methods. Charlotte Mason, unschooling, classical education, Montessori, Waldorf—each offers a philosophy that promises deeper learning. We read books like The Well-Trained Mind and John Holt’s Learning All the Time. We join communities and try on new language: living books, strewing, narration, nature study, project-based learning. This can feel like getting a personal master’s degree in education. At the same time, the pressure to “do it right” according to a method can be intense. It’s easy to believe that if we just followed the rules more faithfully, everything would finally run smoothly.

Curriculum Swapping and Second-Guessing

When the method stops working—or doesn’t fit every child—many of us slide into the curriculum-swapping stage. We collect programs the way other people collect hobby supplies. A shiny new resource appears on social media and we wonder, “Am I shortchanging my kids if we don’t use that too?” Underneath all the second-guessing is fear: fear that there is a secret right answer out there, and we haven’t found it yet.

Building Confidence Over Time

What gradually changes is not our children or the market of materials, but us. After enough experiments, we start to notice patterns. We:

  • see which routines hold us together and which expectations always backfire,
  • pay attention to how each child learns best,
  • and begin to trust that a consistent, flexible rhythm—a shared read-aloud, some language arts, a bit of math, space for science, history, and play—can carry more weight than any single book or program.

Seeing Growth Through Planning From Behind

We also discover the power of “planning from behind.” When we chronicle what actually happens in a notebook or blog rather than obsessing over undone plans, we start to see growth that would otherwise be invisible. A struggle that felt overwhelming in October has quietly eased by April. A child who once resisted writing is now creating comics or stories for fun. Those realizations build our confidence more than any external approval ever could.

Arriving at Us Schooling

Eventually, we arrive at a place we might call “us schooling.” We’re no longer trying to fit someone else’s mold. Instead, we’ve pieced together an education that reflects our family’s values, capacities, quirks, and dreams. It’s not perfect. There are still hard days and unfinished assignments. But there is a growing sense of calm: we know our kids, we know ourselves, and we trust the learning that unfolds in the middle of real life.

Wherever you are on this continuum—jumping in, swapping curriculum, or quietly owning your “us school”—you’re not behind. You’re in process. And that process is exactly how you become the educator your children need.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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[Podcast #314] Two Honest Thoughts About Tech in Homeschool

Brave Writer Podcast

Is tech quietly ruining your homeschool?

In this Brave Writer podcast episode, we explore what happens when we trade the shared adventure of learning at home for one-child-one-screen schooling.

We look at:

  • why so many of us feel pressured to meet standards,
  • how online platforms promise to “save” us,
  • and what our kids might be losing when learning is reduced to logins, slides, and quizzes.

We also imagine a different path: learning as a lifestyle, full of real conversations, messy projects, and magic moments that don’t fit into a metric.

Tune in, then join us in reclaiming the joy of being learners together at home.

Show Notes

If you’ve homeschooled for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed a shift. Where home education once meant cozy mornings with books, baking, and science experiments at the kitchen table, more and more families are turning to sleek online platforms that promise to handle everything for us. Kids log in, work through modules, and we receive reassuring dashboards of data.  

We understand the appeal. Many of us want the fruit of homeschooling—delight-led learning, flexible schedules, freedom from school dysfunction—without the constant pressure of planning, teaching, and troubleshooting. When life is already full, “homeschool in a box” can feel like mercy.  

Tech as a Tempting Shortcut  

Online programs offer exactly what tired parents crave: independent work, built-in accountability, and the sense that someone else has thought of all the subjects and standards our kids “should” be covering. We can work, run a household, or care for younger children while a platform delivers lessons on geology, grammar, and everything in between.  

The trouble isn’t the occasional online class. Used as a “turbo boost” for a specific subject or season, tech can be a gift. The problem comes when those platforms take over the *whole* day. Our kids begin to associate learning with screens, quizzes, and progress bars instead of with real people, real conversations, and the real world. We risk becoming homeschool managers rather than home educators—referees enforcing someone else’s system instead of partners in our children’s curiosity.  

Learning as a Lifestyle, Not a Metric  

Homeschooling gets complicated when we treat it as a DIY version of school: same standards, same benchmarks, just at the kitchen table. We worry about grade-level expectations and test scores, then wonder why our kids resist or shut down. Underneath their squirming and “I hate this” complaints is often a simple fear: “If I really try and I’m not good at it, I’ll disappoint you.”  

What if we laid down the yardstick for a while?  

When we stop obsessing over how our children compare to an invisible average, we’re free to notice something far more important: Are they meaningfully engaged? Do they light up over certain topics? Do they feel safe enough to try, fail, and try again? Real learning connotes use; it happens when kids are doing something that matters to them—baking, filming, coding, building forts, writing stories for a sibling—not just filling in boxes on a screen.  

Making Room for Real-Life Learning  

This is the daring idea at the heart of home education: an ordinary parent is good enough to create a rich learning life. Not a Pinterest-perfect life, not a constantly magical one—but a life where there’s time to explore, daydream, tinker, and talk.  

That might look like:  

  • A simple daily routine with pockets of unstructured time.  
  • Short bursts of skill work (a math page, a phonics lesson, a bit of copywork).  
  • Immediate, meaningful application: Yahtzee after math, read-alouds after phonics, freewriting once handwriting is in place.  
  • Shared adventures—nature walks, museum trips, documentaries, kitchen experiments—that no algorithm could have predicted.  

When we toggle gently between skills and application, without turning every experience into a graded performance, we string together what we like to call “pearls”: those unexpected moments when something clicks, a project takes off, or a child does something new simply because they care.  

We aren’t against tech, hybrid schools, or co-ops. We’re for using the hours we *do* have with our kids to offer something different from metric-driven education: a taste of learning as joyful, relational, and deeply human. When our children discover that they are learners—not just students—we’ve given them a gift no platform can replicate.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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[Podcast #313] Perspective in Learning

Brave Writer Podcast

What if the key to helping your kids love learning is simply seeing the world through their eyes?

In this Brave Writer podcast episode, we explore perspective as the secret sauce of education and connection. We begin with Steven’s unforgettable appreciation letter to UPS (and the jaw-dropping chocolate response!) then move on to practical ways to help kids imagine other points of view:

  • through microscopes and magnifying glasses,
  • collaborative storytelling,
  • fan fiction,
  • and rich books that stretch their empathy.

We also talk about “wasted” time, sandbox learning, and why pleasure matters more than performance.

Tune in and choose one new perspective shift to try with your kids this week.

Show Notes

Perspective is one of the most powerful tools we have as parents and educators, and it’s astonishing how often we forget to use it. We want our kids to care about math facts, handwriting, history timelines, and essay structure, but they don’t yet share our vantage point. From where they sit, those priorities can feel arbitrary, tedious, or even hostile. When we slow down enough to see through their eyes, everything about learning begins to change.

Perspective Begins with Appreciation

One of our favorite stories about perspective started with a simple thank-you note. Steven wrote an appreciation letter to UPS after a particularly skillful delivery experience. That handwritten note climbed the corporate ladder until it reached an executive response team member who tracked the family down to send a tower of gourmet chocolates specially tailored to his love of marshmallows (see below pic!). Buried in her original email was the subject line “customer complaint response” because there wasn’t even a category for appreciation.

Brave Writer Podcast

That tiny glimpse into the UPS system reminded us how rare genuine gratitude is. Most structures are built to handle complaints, not thanks. When our kids learn to imagine the human being behind the uniform, inbox, or name tag, they begin to see the world differently. The same is true in our homeschool. When we respond to their writing with specific, heartfelt praise—“This image is going to stay with me”—we energize them. That positive feedback doesn’t just feel good; it makes them more willing to take risks and more open to gentle critique later.

Changing the Lens—Literally and Figuratively

Perspective-taking often begins with the body. When we hand a child a magnifying glass or jeweler’s loupe, they suddenly notice details they never knew were there: sparkles in a rock, tiny veins in a leaf, the texture of paint on a canvas. A microscope, telescope, or pair of binoculars does the same thing on a different scale. Change the tool, and you change what’s visible.

We can do this with our own bodies, too. Lie on the floor and look at the room from a four-year-old’s height. Pretend to be the dog: crawl on all fours, drink from a bowl, “eat” from a plate with just your mouth. These playful exercises aren’t about perfect imitation; they’re about discovering how different the world feels from another vantage point.

Literature offers a similar invitation. When we read a book like Watership Down, Dogsbody, or the essays in Disability Visibility, we borrow other lives for a while—rabbit lives, dog lives, disabled lives. Fanfiction lets our kids practice this same skill: writing from a villain’s point of view, retelling a fairy tale from the “bad” character’s side, or exploring side characters who rarely get a voice. Over time, this habit of asking, “How does the world look from where you stand?” becomes a form of intellectual and emotional muscle memory.

Becoming Beginners Again

Perspective also means interrogating our own assumptions about learning. Traditional schooling tends to smush content (what kids should know) and skills (what they must do to access that content) into a single, non-negotiable package. Homeschoolers have the luxury of separating them. We can strew interesting books, tools, and experiences that ignite curiosity before we insist on skills like note-taking, outlining, or formal lab reports.

To really understand our children’s struggles, we have to become beginners ourselves. Try doing copywork with your non-dominant hand, learning a new musical clef, or playing with a base-12 number system. It’s humbling and illuminating to feel your brain work that hard again. Suddenly, the seven-year-old balking at handwriting doesn’t look lazy; they look exactly like you, sweating over a brand-new challenge.

When we make room for sandbox learning, such as failed cookie experiments, homemade parachutes for action figures, and invented number systems, we’re teaching something far more valuable than any single fact set. We’re showing our kids that time spent asking questions and trying things is never wasted. It’s how understanding is built. Mastery will come later; for now, we’re cultivating pleasure, curiosity, and the confidence to keep experimenting.

Perspective, in the end, is a practice. It’s choosing to ask, “What does this feel like from your side?” whether we’re talking to a child, a customer-service rep, or a fictional rabbit. When we approach learning from that angle, our homeschools become less about forcing outcomes and more about walking alongside real human beings as they discover the world.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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[Podcast #312] Writing Stations

Brave Writer Podcast

What if your child’s next writing breakthrough started with a stamp and an envelope?

In this Brave Writer podcast episode, we explore how simple handwritten letters can become powerful “writing stations” in your home. We share stories of Melissa’s son, Stephen, whose praise letters to companies have sparked remarkable, human responses—and how that practice turned into rich, authentic writing.

We talk about:

  • building inviting stationery kits,
  • helping kids learn the mechanics of mail,
  • and finding meaningful people to write to.

Join us as we rediscover letter writing as a joyful, doable way to nurture real-world writing skills at home.

Show Notes

Do you ever wonder if handwriting still matters in a world of texts, DMs, and disappearing messages? We see it every time a child sends a real letter: ink on paper has a way of slowing the moment down and making connection tangible. A simple note of appreciation can travel across the country, land in someone’s hands, and be tucked away in a drawer for years. That’s powerful writing.

Turning Companies into People

One of our favorite ways to invite kids into meaningful writing is to encourage them to send praise letters to the companies behind the products they love. Instead of treating big brands as faceless entities, we help our children see that there are actual human beings opening mail on the other end.

We can start small. At breakfast, read the label on a cereal box together and look for the mailing address. Ask your child what they genuinely like about this cereal: the crunch, the flavor, the silly mascot. Then help them turn those thoughts into a short note: “Dear Cheerios people, I love your cereal because…” The goal isn’t to fish for coupons or freebies (though those sometimes appear!); it’s to practice gratitude and to experience the thrill of sending kind words into the world.

This practice works beautifully for kids who have big feelings and unique communication styles. Some children, especially neurodivergent kids, may share more of themselves on paper than they do out loud. A letter gives them time, space, and structure to express what’s on their minds without the pressure of a live conversation.

Letter Writing as a Gentle Path to Writing Skills

We know many kids who insist, “I’ll never use handwriting in real life.” Letter writing lets us gently prove otherwise. Instead of a worksheet or a forced assignment, they’re learning:

  • How to shape letters more clearly, because someone else has to read them.
  • How to organize thoughts into sentences with a beginning, middle, and end.
  • How to adjust tone for a real audience outside the family.

We don’t need to nitpick spelling or punctuation for these letters. A few quirky spellings and crooked margins only highlight that a real child wrote this note. The point is authentic purpose, not perfection. When a reply arrives—a handwritten card, a thank-you note, even a small sample or coupon—kids see in concrete form that their words mattered enough for a stranger to respond. That’s writing feedback you can’t get from a grade at the top of a page.

Handwritten letters also create a record of family life that email simply doesn’t. Grandparents and older relatives, especially, tend to treasure cards and notes. They save them in boxes and pull them out years later. Our children get to experience their writing as something that lasts.

Creating a Home Writing Station

To make all of this easy, we love setting up a writing station at home. It doesn’t have to be fancy. A shoebox or small drawer works beautifully if it’s stocked with inviting materials:

  • Notecards, postcards, and small pads of decorative paper  
  • Envelopes in different sizes  
  • A supply of stamps (including fun designs kids help choose)  
  • Pre-printed address labels for relatives and close friends  
  • A few good pens, markers, or even watercolor postcards

When everything is gathered in one place, letter writing can happen spontaneously: after a birthday, during quiet time, on a rainy afternoon. Children can paint on one side of a postcard and dictate a message for us to write on the back. Older kids can take full ownership, from composing the note to affixing the stamp.

If we’d like inspiration for what to include, we can raid our own desk drawers, browse a bookstore for pretty stationery, or explore curated collections like the “Tools for the Art of Writing” list in the Brave Writer Bookshop. The point isn’t to create a perfect Pinterest corner, but to make writing feel possible, accessible, and even a little bit luxurious.

When we treat handwritten letters as small acts of kindness rather than assignments, kids begin to discover what we’ve known all along: their thoughts are worth sharing, their words have weight, and there are people in the world eager to hear from them. That’s the heart of writing we want to nurture—one stamp, one envelope, one delighted recipient at a time.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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[Podcast #311] An Atmosphere, a Discipline, a Life

Brave Writer Podcast

Julie Bogart and Melissa Wiley reunite to reflect on one of Charlotte Mason’s most enduring ideas: that education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life. What begins as a heartfelt story about a cozy childhood home becomes a rich conversation about the environments we create for learning—spaces that invite participation, curiosity, and joy.

Together, Julie and Melissa trace how atmosphere extends far beyond decor: it’s about invitation and accessibility—baskets of art supplies, blocks within reach, and time to be alone with one’s imagination. They explore:

  • the balance between discipline and freedom,
  • how attention and process nurture joy,
  • and what today’s parents can learn from slowing down in an age of distraction. 

From Charlotte Mason’s 19th-century wisdom to 21st-century challenges, this episode is a practical and deeply reassuring guide to cultivating meaningful education that feels alive, attentive, and full of enchantment.

Show Notes

Charlotte Mason once wrote that “education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.” More than a century later, her words still point us toward a gentler, truer approach to learning—one that honors the whole child and the home that surrounds them.

An Atmosphere That Invites Participation

Atmosphere isn’t about how your home looks—it’s about how it feels. It’s the warmth of being invited to join in, to create, to make, to wonder. When we fill our homes with tools for exploration—paintbrushes within reach, books in easy stacks, a cleared table for projects—we invite our children to participate in learning rather than simply receive it. An atmosphere rich in invitation nurtures curiosity far more deeply than a picture-perfect space ever could.

Discipline as Gentle Habit

Discipline, in Mason’s sense, isn’t about control or rigidity. It’s about forming life-giving habits that allow focus and flow to emerge naturally. A few minutes of consistent practice—writing, sketching, tending a bird feeder—teaches persistence and attention in ways that worksheets cannot. Discipline provides the rhythm that helps curiosity take root and blossom into skill.

A Life Infused with Joy

When atmosphere and discipline work together, learning becomes a way of life. Children discover joy in attention itself—in getting lost in a book, a hobby, or an idea. In our world of constant distraction, this joy is revolutionary. It reminds us that education isn’t the pursuit of outcomes, but the cultivation of wonder, purpose, and delight.

When we slow down enough to notice what truly matters—time, focus, shared curiosity—we rediscover education as it was meant to be: an atmosphere of love, a discipline of growth, and a life of continual discovery.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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