Why do you think prejudice exists in the world?
Email: After the convention…
Welcome new Brave Writer readers. I so enjoyed meeting many of you at the convention last weekend. I received the following wonderful email on Sunday and want to share it with you. It tickles me no end when someone puts into practice the ideas I share so effectively and quickly! Hope it encourages you too.
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Julie,
My name is Kari McGrath. I sat in on three of your sessions with my friend this past weekend, and ended up buying your book, and I just can’t wait to get started! I have told every friend I’ve run into that homeschools, and I shared last night with my husband, who thought it sounded great. Unfortunately, I got sick at the convention and lost my voice (now you might remember me!), so I stayed home today from church, and my oldest daughter stayed home with me. I was so excited, I told her about this new writing program we are going to be doing, how it will be fun, and I don’t think we’ll cry anymore! I know you talked about “Freewrite Fridays” and said that it would work Mon-Thurs…well, I have to let you know it will work on a Sunday, too! I just had to share this with you.
After I told her today what we’d be doing (freewriting), I couldn’t wait! So, she and I went into the kitchen, got our paper and pencils. I told her what we were going to do, and told her I was setting the timer for 3 minutes. She looked scared, so I said, “okay, we’ll write together for one minute!” One minute went by, and she was still writing, so she gave me permission to set it for 2 more minutes. At the end of 3 minutes, I stopped, and she said, “hold on, I still have another sentence to finish!” (This is my daughter who CRIES and gets spankings for her attitude when we write!) We stopped when she was done, then we read ours to each other. Here is hers: (note: The first sentence is from Lemony Snickets-when Count Olaf died, the second sentence is from Star Wars, then the rest of the sentences go back to another scene from Lemony Snickets..whose books she LOVED!)
count olaf laid in the water with the helmet in his hands. but master i Just saved your life. As the harpon {harpoon} hit his stomach he flew threw the wall and in to the fountin as he was drowing violet Klaus and sunny ran to the fountin they said they were sorry he drowned.
Ha! It was ALL I could do to not ask why she changed courses from Lemony Snickets to Star Wars and back, but I didn’t!!! I told her it was very good! Then I read her mine. It went:
I love my daughter, Myra. She is a precious gift from God to me. I wanted a child for so many years, and God gave HER to me. I am so thankful He heard my prayers! She is compassionate, kind, a great helper to me, a friend to me. She’s a beautiful girl, but she doesn’t see that. Others do, though-they tell me all the time. I don’t know what she’ll do when she grows up, but I think she’ll make a good mother.
I couldn’t get through reading that to her without crying. And, I kept crying. (I think it was half love, and half relief that she actually wrote!) She came over and hugged me. I explained that this was all we were going to do-once a week-for the next eight weeks, and then I explained how we’d pick one to revise, etc… Her response? “Aw..just one a week? Can we do more than that? That was alot of fun!!” WHAT???!!! Wow!!! Then she said, “Mom, your ‘poem’ you wrote was really nice…can I keep it?”
All I have to say is, Thank you, Julie! And, I haven’t even started reading ‘the jungle’ yet! Ha!
God bless,
Kari McGrath, Kentucky
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And that’s how it’s done!
Friday Freewrite: Make a list
We haven’t done this for a long time. So today’s prompt: Make a list all the way down the page of everything you love or know lots and lots about. No need for sentences. Feel free to be silly (which means you can write that you know a lot about hair accessories or kinds of salt used in cooking, if those are areas of your personal expertise). Listing historical periods, films, musical artists, trees, subject areas like medieval history or early Renaissance art qualify too.
Ready, set, go!
April is National Poetry Month
I receive daily poems in April through the poets.org website (you can sign up too!). Today’s poem, though clearly from another era (perhaps my childhood, or yours, or your mother’s), is also timeless in its essence. To mothers:
Small Talk
by Eleanor Lerman
It is a mild day in the suburbs
Windy, a little gray. If there is
sunlight, it enters through the
kitchen window and spreads
itself, thin as a napkin, beside
the coffee cup, pie on a plate
What am I describing?
I am describing a dream
in which nobody has died
These are our mothers:
your mother and mine
It is an empty day; everyone
else is gone. Our mothers
are sitting in red chairs
that look like metal hearts
and they are smoking
Your mother is wearing
sandals and a skirt. My
mother is thinking about
dinner. The bread, the meat
Later, there will be
no reason to remember
this, so remember it
now: a safe day. Time
passes into dim history.
And we are their babies
sleeping in the folds of
the wind. Whatever our
chances, these are the
women. Such small talk
before life begins
When You Want to Give Up
It’s April. Spring break is just around the corner, and happens to come at the right time every year (the moment when I want to collapse from the drain of winter quarter)… except for one thing. Sometimes when I allow myself to let down during the break, I lose all my energy to finish the year strong. Our homeschool dribbles to the end of May and ekes into June with just enough sluggish energy to feel we have completed the year’s work. Or in those “let’s just hurry up and get to summer” years, the dribbling and eking maybe didn’t even occur and we hope no one from the state shows up at our door in July looking for work samples from seven subjects.
I used to put it this way:
- In the fall, I was a classical educator.
- In winter, I shifted to a Charlotte Mason-unit study kind of school style.
- By spring, radical unschoolers.
If this is you and right now you’re wondering how you can get to the end without the end coming too soon, here are a few Brave Writer suggestions that may help.
Change the routine.
Maybe you let everyone sleep in longer than usual and you start the day outside (weather permitting). Start with an entry in a nature journal or tending seedlings you plant. If you usually begin with math, start with grammar. Save math for later in the day. Maybe you can kick a soccer ball before you do any school work at all! Do something utterly different than you have been. Look at the Brave Writer Lifestyle to trigger ideas.
Get ready the night before.
Best piece of advice, hardest to follow. Don’t labor over it. Before bed, pick one thing to use as your centerpiece the next day. It might be a book of poetry, perhaps flowers to plant. Maybe you find a DVD that the kids can enjoy in the afternoon, or you decide to bake brownies so that during read aloud time, there are fresh munchies. Stay simple. Just plan one thing (maybe all you do is stack the school books on the table so they are easily found and no one has to complain that they “can’t find the grammar book”).
Play music.
We forget how powerful music is in creating mood. If you’ve got an iPod and a speaker set, put that out the night before. You can throw it on shuffle and let the tunes roll, or you can be more deliberate and create a morning playlist conducive to studying. You might even pick a song (instrumental) to use for either freewriting or free drawing. For freewriting, allow the mood of the music to guide the writing. For free drawing, put a variety of writing elements on the table (markers, crayons, colored pencils, high lighters, pens). Your kids will express the mood of the music as they listen.
Poetry.
Perhaps you’re already good at poetry teatimes. If you’re not, this is meant for you. Spring is the perfect time to develop/cultivate the habit of reading poetry, sipping tea and eating treats. Read about it here.
Shakespeare.
May is the month of Shakespeare in Brave Writer. Take advantage of the fact that we have already structured into our world a focus you can usurp and use in yours! We have a Shakespeare class for high schoolers available and we offer some suggestions of ways to introduce Shakespeare to your kids in the Brave Writer Lifestyle. The blog will also feature some specifically Shakespeare-y kinds of things to do with your family too.
Take classes.
We have good ones. Kidswrite Basic, Kidswrite Intermediate and more. Don’t miss your chance to get these in before the year ends.
Take a day off just for you.
Plan a hike in the local hills, go to an art museum alone for a morning, see a movie no one wants to see with you, spend a day wandering a labyrinth, get a massage, get a mani-pedi in bright red. Do something to recharge that takes you away from the burden of daily planning. You deserve it. You’ve been working hard all year.
Bottom line: Each year feels like you re-invent your homeschool. That’s because you do. You’ve got kids changing ages and stages, your income fluctuates, your home routine is up-ended by some sports schedule or dance or acting. You find that what worked one year is just not going to work the next. You’re at the end of one of those years now. What things can you do now, that you may not ever get to do again? What opportunities does this year offer that will vanish come September? Do those now. If that means going to Disneyland while you still have kids under 10, do it. If it means having teatimes outside in your backyard because next year you’ll be living in a condo, have as many as you can. If it means that you have leisurely mornings now but next year will be driving someone to school, enjoy sleeping in and reading together in pajamas these last few weeks.
Whatever phase of life you’re in, savor it. Look ahead and consider today. What can I do today that makes a memory, that preserves what I love, that enhances our well-being? Then do that. Math can wait (unless of course math IS that thing).
