Brave Learning: The Trick to Writing Well

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Recently on Brave Learning…

The Trick to Writing Well

A missive for your teens to read: Please share it with them!

There’s a reason that teachers, employers, or parents ask to see something you’ve written. It’s a way to see what you know!

Writing is your chance to compose a response, explain your thinking, or demonstrate your understanding. Unless you put those thoughts and ideas somewhere for others to read, they stay in your head, out of sight.

Beyond the academic context, plenty of us write, even when it’s not for a grade! Do you ever wonder why we bother? Why go through the trouble of writing down our thoughts? Why not just think them? Or have a big juicy conversation with someone?

It turns out, writing does something for us that thinking and talking alone can’t accomplish. It actually helps us think differently and learn something about ourselves and the world around us, too.

Here’s how the writing process looked for me as I sat down to write this very post! You might experience some similar sensations when you commit words to the page…

[Keep reading]

Subscribe to Brave Learning on Substack where we chat, discuss, problem-solve, and create together. Here’s what you can expect: weekly themed content, freewriting prompts, and a podcast for kiddos called Monday Morning Meeting (first 6 are free)! 

Brave Learning with Julie Bogart on Substack

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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

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Produced by NOVA

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Enjoy YOUR Holiday

Brave Writer

As you ramp up into holdiay spirit, you might be tempted to put your self esteem in your kids’ hands. If they don’t like the cookies you bake, or seem disappointed in the gift you purchase, or show no interest in a family movie night, you may feel like you’re failing them. Their reaction may bring your spirits down.

Shift the Focus

Concentrate on what makes this holiday season meaningful and twinkly for YOU. Each time you make a plan, make sure you enjoy it and inhabit fully. Let your children’s reactions ride side car. Sometimes they’ll be into it and sometimes they won’t, but it’s not because you didn’t put in enough effort.

Put your energy where it makes your life brighter and merrier. If your kids happen to appreciate the bright and merry with you, that’s a bonus!

By the way: they can also make the holiday bright and merry for themselves. Give them the twinkle lights and the glue gun and the evergreens to decorate as they wish. Turn them loose in the kitchen with your supervision. The more they participate, the more they will feel like the holiday is meaningful to them.

One of my favorite activities as a kid was to wrap each of the stairwell posts in red ribbon. This took a long time at my grandmother‘s house and I have such fond memories of it. Think about ways your children can turn this season into something special that requires their effort rather than just appreciating yours.

This post was originally shared on Instagram.
Watch the accompanying reel for more.

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REPLAY: What About Grades?

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It’s so easy as a home educator to wonder if your kids are keeping pace with their schooled peers. Sometimes we want reassurance that we aren’t ruining their lives!

The truth is…

We pulled our kids out of school to get out of a system of evaluation that often crushes:

  • independent thinking,
  • creativity,
  • and motivation to learn.

In a recent Substack Live, I spoke about the danger of a grading mentality in learning and offer some thoughts on how to measure progress without them!

Watch the Replay

Brave Learning with Julie Bogart on Substack

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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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