A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

MacKenzie Koppa is a homeschooling mother, creator of the Cultivating the Lovely community, and a voice-over actor! She’s built an amazing podcast for families called The Same Page. Her idea? Give five minutes a day to this podcast to cover essentials in your child’s education as a family. She’s got great energy and passion for children and learning.

I hope you’ll tune in.

This is the last episode of Season 4 of the podcast. We’re taking a little hiatus in October while we prepare Season 5 for you (called “Ask Julie”). All new content! Coming soon in November. Can’t wait!

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Getting on the Same Page

MacKenzie’s podcast, The Same Page, is practically designed with Brave Writer families in mind. The core of each episode is memory work encompassing poetry, Shakespeare, historical facts, and scripture.

So in five minutes or less, you can get a spoonful of great literature and, over the course of multiple episodes, you and your family can memorize them while enjoying a shared experience.

MacKenzie recently had to break up with homeschooling, and it was heartbreaking but she still wanted to provide this information for her children. So she actually first created the podcast so that her own family could listen to it in the car on the way to school.

“But then I realized if I need this resource that there’s probably a lot of other moms who would like it as well… and then I realized I could have really used that when I was a homeschool mom, too!”

And these little bite-sized chunks of literature really can fit into almost any family’s lifestyle, whether you want a fun break between lessons, you travel frequently, or you just love exposing yourself to more literature.

In addition to these core episodes, MacKenzie and her family are also working through classic children’s novels chapter by chapter. They are currently working through The Wizard of Oz, and you can find a new chapter on the feed four days a week.

Beyond being a great tool for education, the main goal of the podcast is actually allowing families to foster deeper relationships through shared experience.

So go forth, learn, and share!

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Help a homeschooler like you find more joy in the journey. Thanks!

Do you have teens? Will you have teens? Have you heard that they will be challenging or wonderful? Your best friends or strangers in your children’s bodies?

Teens are awesome—in every way, from being competent and so interesting, to mystifying and sometimes downright frustrating. Let’s talk today about all the wonderfulness of parenting and home educating the teen years.

Psst: you get the hang of it more and more so just know you’re growing too!

Your Kids Will Change

Kids change during their teen years. They get curious, they start to notice that you’re not a sage expert, they meet friends and compare notes, and they start to wonder about the world beyond your house.

Especially in homeschooling, when you have curated this environment so carefully, it can be a shock if they start finding fault with it.

But every child has to go through this; every child has to examine the source material of their own childhood.

Didn’t you?

Have a Big, Juicy Conversation

We love this exercise because it allows you to partner with your teen child in exploring their opportunities, interests, and goals – and helps you facilitate those in any way you can.

All you and your child have to do is brainstorm a huge list of all the things they want to do before they turn 18. Joining an acting troupe, going to space camp, learning an instrument, indoor rock climbing, a new language, going on dates, attending a prom: whatever it is, put it on the list!

It can be easy to forget that our own children have awareness of what typical teens do, and they likely want to sample experiences like school dances.

After your child turns 13, they get to have an increasingly large say in their lives. We just have to get comfortable with it, even if we don’t like their say.

So can you re-conceive of life for your teenager in a way that is meaningful for them and honors who they are? Can you get comfortable allowing them to take a risk, something not working out, and then trying again?

You don’t have to push your children out of the nest – you can escort them out of the nest and give them some opportunities to see the world is bigger than the house they’re in.

Would you please post a review on Apple Podcasts for us?
Help a homeschooler like you find more joy in the journey. Thanks!

Do you wonder if it’s okay to earn money on the side while homeschooling? Are you skilled in some way but don’t know how to monetize it? Would it help your family to know that there was a stream of income that could pay for the extras like lacrosse gear or a field trip to Williamsburg?

These were the questions I asked myself that drove me to find ways to earn extra money while homeschooling. I didn’t launch a full-fledged business right out of the gate. In fact, my first income came from freelance work as a ghost-writer and editor of PhD dissertations.

In this episode, I give you some tips for how to go about adding additional money to your strapped finances without crushing your homeschool under the weight of too much work.

The first thing we need to address is the mindset.

Right off the bat, know that it’s okay to want to earn money! You’re not a bad homeschooler, you’re not a bad spouse, you’re not less devoted to your children, you’re not overly materialistic.

Now, you have the freedom to decide whether you want to do that, and it’s okay to decide you don’t – but it is YOUR choice!

The 4 keys to earning money while homeschooling:

1. Determine your skills. You may be wondering, what is it that I’m going to do? Well, this probably isn’t the right time to reinvent the wheel. Consider the things you’re already good at it and use that as a starting point – work doesn’t have to be something difficult or something you don’t want to do!
2. Get good at your skills. You deserve a little time away from your family to devote to yourself, and that’s how you’ll grow as the human being you were born to be. You need it, you deserve it – all you need to do is take it!
3. Give your skills away. You can start getting some work experience by volunteering your skills. And if you’re pursuing something you like to do, this should be fun!
4. Start charging money! Pricing is always a challenge, and you can do some research but, ultimately, you may end up having to sort of make a guess and pick a number. But people, particularly women, often undervalue themselves – so start with the number that sounds right to you and then double it!

Would you please post a review on Apple Podcasts for us?
Help a homeschooler like you find more joy in the journey. Thanks!

After working with parents for years, we have learned that there is often a reluctance to give your own efforts to your child’s writing.

But kids with parents who are involved in their education get better grades, and as a result, they feel more successful – and children who receive no support end up performing worse.

This podcast episode will help support you as you support your kids, so that they can be their best academic selves.

Partnering with Your Child

Parental involvement in education is what produces the greatest results in children!

It’s easy to understand why this happens in a traditional school environment with one teacher for 20 or more kids. All that teacher can see is the final result of effort, and they have no way of knowing who contributed what amounts of effort.

But you aren’t in a traditional school environment – and you have a front-row seat to your children’s development! You can see exactly what they contribute, and you know when you help them structure or sentence or add in a vocabulary word; you know what is their effort and what is your combined efforts.

So just kick that fear out of your brain and embrace involvement in your children’s writing education – collaboration in writing is a gift, and you have both the responsibility and ability to give that gift to your child so that you can mentor them into the writing experience!

Would you please post a review on Apple Podcasts for us?
Help a homeschooler like you find more joy in the journey. Thanks!