This month we've become a Brave Writer family!
Rebecca Spooner from HomeschoolOn.com has started a book club for homeschool families to teach Language Arts and to walk them through the process of Brave Writer.
If you haven't heard of Brave Writer yet, know it's amazing. It's meant to change the way you teach your kids, not just be another program! Author, Julie Bogart, calls it a "lifestyle".
It will change the way you teach Language Arts. It will enrich your family environment. It will help your children write with joy instead of tears.
Hearing such great things and listening to rave reviews myself, I was curious. Did I want Brave Writer in our home too? Just at the right time, Rebecca Spooner offered a course that would walk you through it, so I jumped right on and signed up.
We've been enjoying the course and reading the book of the month, "Ginger Pye". My kids love it too.
Now, if you've heard a lot about Brave Writer, you've heard about the families that love it...like all of them. Haha. But! You'll also find the Mamas out there who were just too confused on how to do it, how to teach it, or what to buy to start...so confused, they give up. Seeing this come up many times, I wanted to see for myself. A week into the March course I decided to go to the Brave Writer website and figure out what I needed in order to keep on doing this way of learning in my home and what was the problem I heard about.
I get what people said now.
Easy click & order curriculum? I have to say no.
I worked for a day and a half reading through the website, printing any FREE samples & watching videos on how to use Brave Writer (including the author's 1:16:00 webinar). Should a homeschooling parent have to put in so much effort to get the gist of a program? I don't think so. I had heard that purchasing "The Writer's Jungle" (the teaching guide & book for understanding the philosophy) would make sense of everything, but should a homeschool parent have to purchase an $80 resource just to find out what program is right for them? I don't think so.
BUT! I am posting this to help!
Please know I'm a fan and highly recommend Brave Writer. That said, with attempting to start with Brave Writer you may encounter these roadblocks:
× The website doesn't point you clearly to all materials you need for an age or grade.
× The purposes within the different products are unclear, causing you to ask, "do I need this?"
× All products have a separate whimsical name that make them confusing to put together.
Let me clear things up. Things may be foggy because it is such a FLEXIBLE program.
(note: Brave Writer author, Julie Bogart also offers to help and respond to email questions you have. That's great, but not everyone wants to bother. Like me, we just want to find what we need and get it.)
- Brave Writer wants you to teach at your child's level, not above it, so even though some products have approximate ages or grades, they don't "sell" every product according to age or grade.
- The elements of teaching of how to write, teaching grammar, and teaching both of those together each have different parts that you can buy separately, allowing parents flexibility (ie: if you want help to teach Grammar to your child, but want to choose your own books, you can purchase only what you will use).
- The names were the worst part for me to figure out...and if you seek help from another Brave Writer enthusiasts, they usually start speaking their own "lingo" and lose you. However! I've made a chart!
One of the most painful things in my time of research was the giant amount of reading...or the hour+ videos. I knew I wanted to start, I just didnt know what material I needed and couldn't know just by going to the website.
I have eliminated all the fluff and put together a 1-Page reference sheet for all of Brave Writer. Yes, just one page...
Download it HERE. (No subscription required) https://drive.google.com/file/d/12gHMLVAIbo9WmTN_8FeOhqpQ-IE9VPY1/view?usp=h I look forward to continuing on as a Brave Writer family! My kids are learning how to write. We spend time together over tea and poetry. We even use movie nights as L.A. learning opportunities! If you're still a little unsure and hesitant, I highly recommend joining Rebecca Spooner's book club to get a taste and have support. LA Family Book Club: https://homeschoolon.com/checkout-3/?product_id=29892
See how we're loving this book club here.
