Be the learner

Be the learner you want to see in your children.

Take personal inventory over a cup of coffee this morning:

What do you wish you had time to learn/do/be?
Join a Zumba class? Apply to grad school? Read an art history book? Learn to quilt? Read a novel that is for adults? Garden? Read more about a historical moment? Watch Downton Abbey Season 1 or A&E Pride and Prejudice? Figure out how to calculate the amount of feed you need for your chickens you will hatch next spring?

What can you do related to that aspiration today? Do one thing on your way to that goal – check out the book or movie, go to the website and download the application instructions, visit a quilting store, stop by the library, look up fall plants online, look up math equations…?

When can you do it? After lunch during naptime? Tonight after your spouse or partner gets home? Those work, but they are when you are alone.

How about right now, in front of your kids, ignoring what they are doing for a few minutes? Just dive in and talk as you go: “I think I’d like to understand the abolition movement better. It’s been so interesting reading about the Civil War with you guys. Give me a few minutes. I’m going to put some books on hold at the library.” Or “Hey before we get started today, I want to watch one episode of Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting. I’m curious about art history and know nothing about it. You can watch if you want, or play with Legos. Then we’ll start your stuff.”

Don’t put off your own learning. Your passion for what you want to know IS the fuel of your homeschool. It’s not just a model (like you don’t do it to “demonstrate” passion). You do it because you ARE interested. You live it because you need it to thrive! Which is what you hope happens to your kids with their interests.

You must make time right in front of your kids to do what interests you. The only reason kids want to be adults is that adults do cool stuff. So do the cool stuff—and don’t feel guilty. It’s essential to their growth and your well-being.

What will you do/learn/be today? Let’s share in the comments. 🙂

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Friday Freewrite: Easy Peasy

Write about one of the easiest decisions you’ve ever made.

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10 Tips for the “Lazy” Writer

10 Tips for "Lazy" Writer

There are tips, practices, tools, and helps that make writing easier. Don’t believe for a minute that your kids are lazy!

Ten ways to encourage writing today:

  1. Put out gel pens and black paper
  2. Instant Message or text with your child
  3. Light candles and listen to music while writing
  4. Write a sentence on a white board that is provocative yet unfinished, like: “If I could do whatever I wanted today, I would….”
  5. Write together (at the table, everyone at the same time)
  6. Write at the mall, jotting down fashion observations
  7. Give a shoulder massage before writing
  8. Comment on 3 status updates on social media
  9. Rewrite the ending to a favorite movie or book (make it melodramatic, sad, angry, happy, or include aliens!)
  10. Write on a clipboard, under a table, lying on a trampoline, up in a tree, with sidewalk chalk on the driveway

Writing is about freedom to express without the pressure that comes from straight jacket formats. Formats are only helpful once kids feel FREE to write.

Let me say it again: You can’t produce good writing that fits a format until you’ve spent hundreds of hours writing without caring one whit about format. Once you feel as easy writing as you do talking, formats are a snap of the fingers to teach and follow.

So play with words today.

Growing Brave Writers

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Writing about Writing, Writing Exercises | 1 Comment »

Podcast: Transition to Ownership—Part 2

Transition to Ownership: Part 2

This is our 5th podcast in the series related to the Natural Stages of Growth in writing. We started discussing the Transition to Ownership stage in the last episode and this is the second half of that conversation. You’ll want to listen to Part One first.

We continue our discussion of your role in the “Big Juicy Conversations” you need to be having with your fledgling thinkers.

Enjoy!

Julie

To help grow writers at this stage, Help for High School is a self-study program written for and to teens, and the Boomerang provides teens with continued copywork and dictation practice—as well as quality literature to read and examine.

The Transition to Ownership bundle combines Help for High School and The Boomerang at a discount!

Ready for more?

Below are links to the complete Stages of Growth in Writing podcast series.

Jot It Down!
Partnership Writing
Faltering Ownership
Transition to Ownership Part 1
Transition to Ownership Part 2
Eavesdropping on the Great Conversation

Posted in Natural Stages of Growth in Writing, Podcasts | 5 Comments »

Pat Schneider on honoring geniuses

My goodness. How can I not share this today?

“Genius often emerges where there is intimate support for it. Shakespeare worked in the intimate supportive community of a strong theater that wanted his next play. Dickinson worked within the intimate community of a family that loved her and protected her time and privacy. Neither of them were seen by their contemporaries as being greatly gifted. It seems truly important that there be a community of support around the artist that protects the making of art” (Pat Schneider *Writing Alone and With Others* xxi).

This quote struck me this morning as I work on the Partnership Writing product. What I know about homeschooling families is that they are uniquely intimate. That’s not to say there isn’t intimacy in families with kids in public or private schools. Rather, home education creates a context where genius can thrive. Why? Because there are no other people on the planet who are as predisposed to recognize the particular genius of children as the parents of those same little people.

Every time I speak, I’m inundated with mothers who share with me the brilliance of their kids—the breadth of imagination, the depth of vocabulary, the surprising accumulation of facts that the parent never saw the child amassing. Over and over again, parents marvel at who lives inside the skin of their children.

It’s from that appreciation, that “what a miracle is my child” posture that writing growth can occur! We are not fighting for success in grammar and punctuation. Our mission is not the proper execution of essays. We are not charged with critiquing and down-dressing our children for what appears to be lethargy or ineptitude.

Our chief mission at home with our children is to discover and articulate their particular brilliances, and then to fiercely protect the space into which they cast their risky thoughts so that they may take the tentative steps toward refining that genius, knowing they are emotionally supported and respected.

You get to do that work! Not a school. Not a theater company. But like Emily Dickinson’s family, you may provide for your children the emotionally safe, enthusiastically prepared environment that allows for risk-taking, failure, exaggeration, and blossoming—all in one.

Geniuses. That’s who you’re raising. Make sure you remember that today.

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