Blend writing instruction and scientific curiosity!
Are homemade volcanoes, paper airplanes, and animal behavior your kind of thing? Want to become a better writer while finding out how the flu spreads or what it takes to make a high-speed train go faster?
Brave Writer’s Skip into Science class is popular with kids who are less about writing and more about
Book/Movie Duo:The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Don’t miss the opportunity to introduce your kids to this beloved British sci-fi romp through the universe as told by the hilarious (and at times irreverent) Douglas Adams. Seriously—a hip choice for teens!
What’s more fitting for post-holidays than a book called PIE? Alice loves her Aunt Polly, and she connects with her beloved aunt through one of Polly’s favorite things: making pies! When her aunt unexpectedly passes away, Alice is left with Aunt Polly’s cat, Lardo, and a mystery!
The good news? This book features many pie recipes!
Set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. This book is a well loved classic and worth a read for you, too, if you’ve never read it.
This Air Force family moves frequently, so homeschooling helps them to keep consistent with their learning. It keeps alive Lydia’s love of all things creative, too! She’s a self-professed eclectic, “flexible but routined” homeschooler who can’t resist a creative, artsy project! We love that!
We were honored to find out that we placed on Lydia’s homeschooling bucket list!
Ever since I had heard of Brave Writer, I wanted to try a class. I mostly tried it to “check off” a style of writing I was not confident in (poetry).
Lydia signed her family up for our Playing with Poetry: Discovery class last winter. (A great choice, since the whole family gets to participate for one fee!)
Isaac, then 8, was struggling to read and write. He hated to even try writing and often refused because it was too hard.
Lydia offered Isaac a lot of support. (We share ways to do that in our video “How to Support your Child in an Online Class”—emailed to you when you register!)
It was transformative.
I never forced him to write or complete anything, but invited him to come along for the ride as much as he wanted, and he chose to work through the fear…
I offered to jot things down. I asked questions to get him thinking and more questions to clarify. The first poem was based on a photograph so he just said words that popped into his mind while looking at his photo.
Lydia helped Isaac gather all the materials needed to create his masterpiece then—
[W]hen he was ready, we read through his list of words and he very thoughtfully chose which words to use and created beautiful phrases that then took on a life of its own and became his very first poem.
Aren’t you grinning ear to ear thinking about a reluctant writer who just cranked out a full POEM? I am!
Writing coach, Susanne Barrett, swooped in to support Isaac’s newfound confidence.
Susanne’s feedback to him completely changed his outlook on his ability. She told him she could tell that he cared about beautiful language and chose each word very carefully, a sign of a true writer. He beamed and took all that to heart and has been writing ever since and now wants to be a writer.
Not only did they have a wonderful experience in that 4-week class (a perfect length, Lydia says, for a deep dive), but the effects of the class have been lasting.
I’m… confident that without partnering with Isaac, and jotting things down for him, he might not have realized he CAN be a writer even while struggling to read, spell, and write.
Since that first poem, Lydia’s kids have taken several of our classes!
I appreciate how the classes have taken some of the pressure off of me to check the box of writing and it’s organized and totally doable! I love how much parents are encouraged to partner with their child in order to grow and succeed.
Thank you, Lydia! And thank you, Isaac for sharing your poetry with us! (See Isaac’s work in the training tip below!)
Brave Writer has two Playing with Poetry classes. Take them in any order! Don’t miss the chance to partner with your kids in a relaxed writing environment.
We also invite you to log in to a sample class. Click around, play with our text editor, and read real instructor responses to writing posted in class.
Words are the building blocks of our imaginative world.
Think of words like Lego bricks. Before our kids are building the Eiffel Tower out of Lego, they simply investigate the bricks through play. They:
take them apart,
attach them in new formations,
mix and match them.
Words are the same!
Here’s a training tip to encourage wordplay in your homeschool.
Wordplay is also the perfect preparation for our Arrow (ages 9-12) and Boomerang (ages 13-18) Book Clubs. They offer a virtual living room space–where students gather to freely discuss the novels they read with you at home.
Brave Writer’s online Book Clubs are a great way to homeschool in a busy season. Try our low-intensity, warm and welcoming discussion clubs!
We also invite you to log in to a sample class. Click around, play with our text editor, and read real instructor responses to writing posted in class.
Here’s the thing. I can teach you the formula for a 5-paragraph essay on a napkin. That’s easy! But because educators often over-emphasize format, other crucial elements of essay writing get overlooked.
That’s why we created our Essay Prep series. It covers the foundational skills and practices that comprise essay writing—beyond just the number of paragraphs.
Great essays are built from great insight. To generate that insight, teens need to consider multiple points of view simultaneously and dispassionately. Academic discourse requires the writer to know what they think, and why.
We also invite you to log in to a sample class. Click around, play with our text editor, and read real instructor responses to writing posted in class.
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