Is Brave Writer the right fit for your family?
This is a common question for those that are new to Brave Writer.
We’ve enjoyed the Brave Writer curriculum on and off over the years now and have used it for grades 2-9.
In this post I will share what we like about Brave Writer, what part of the curriculum we use and how, and what elements weren’t the right fit for our family.
What is Brave Writer?
Julie Boggart, is the creator of Brave Writer, and is one of the most inspiring speakers in the homeschooling community. Her book the Brave Learner breaks down a lot of traditional views on how to educate at home. She offers the freedom to create a learning environment that’s suited to your lifestyle, your child, and you.
Julie inspires enchanted learning
The Brave Writer isn’t just a curriculum, it’s a lifestyle.
It focuses on finding the writers voice before implementing the mechanics.
–> Learn more about the writing stages, curriculum and online classes on the Brave Writer website
What we like and don’t like about Brave Writer
First the Brave Writer Lifestyle aspects we love in our homeschool
As an eclectic homeschooler, I pull inspiration from many different places to suit our individual learners.
Brave Writer Lifestyle and curriculum that we love and use:
- The literature guides- we’ve used the Dart, the Arrow and the Boomerang. Some years I’ve purchased the yeary bundle, many times I’ve found it better to just purchase individual ones. These literature guides offer copywork, French dictation and dictation (Charlotte Mason inspired) and teach literary elements through great books. I try to aim for 4 a year.
- Poetry Tea Time– drinking tea and eating treats while listening to poetry has become one of our kids favorite homeschooling activities. I often choose nature inspired poetry books, then follow up with some poetry copywork. Check out the poetry tea time website for more great resources.
- Writers Jungle– is a guide to encourage home educators in the writing process from K- grade 12. This was her first product that she launched and it has stood the test of time! I had mine printed as I reach for it frequently.*update* this product was re-branded into Growing Brave Writers many years ago but I haven’t purchased it to compare.
- Free Write Fridays– another favorite for our kids, writing for the sake of creativity and enjoying the writing process. This is a day that you don’t care if words are incorrectly spelled or if the sentences aren’t structured properly. Free Write days (doesn’t have to be on a Friday!) are to ignite that flame and desire of writing. I love the philosophy that if kids don’t enjoy writing, they are less likely to care about it in the future. Often times the ‘writers voice’ disappears when kids feel overwhelmed with learning grammar, sentence structure, spelling etc.
- Jot it Down Writing Projects is something our kids did together last year. The fairy tale one was a favorite!
How to adapt the curriculum for your family
One of the complaints about Brave Writer is the price. When you see 3 products bundled together, it can seem like far too much. I highly recommend you don’t focus on the bundle and try out one literature guide (or the free samples) based on your child’s writing growth stage. She has samples of the writing project curriculum too.
When you buy individual literature guides there’s no pressure and you can take your time. It’s also cheaper this way!
Once you get comfortable with a sample and know your kids writing stage, you can add in other products like I did.
Spreading it out allows you to get comfortable with the lifestyle.
Adapting it to your child
My grade 4 daughter is in the Partnership in Writing stage, yet the Arrow guides are a little too much for her. We go through the copywork in more than one sitting, I highlight a lot for her (she’s very visual) and we take our time. My goal is to do a few a year instead of 1 a month. I often don’t do the entire thing either if it seems overwhelming for her.
Brave Writer is a digital product, sometimes I print the guides out, other times I don’t.
I often just print off some of the pages the kids need to use, then read digitally.
My daughter really liked to print and bind her own units for excitement!
What we don’t love about Brave Writer
We’ve been using this curriculum on and off for over a decade now. I’ve seen the changes in the guides over the years (as well as the price).
While I do love the literature guides and appreciate them being organized by age, some of the reads have become heavier in topic very fast from Dart to the Arrow. While I think it is great to offer a diverse and inclusive group of authors, the yearly bundles were too expensive for our family and some of the selections weren’t the right fit. Because I knew the books weren’t the right fit for our more sensitive kid, the Darts weren’t enough but the Arrows not the right book.
Again, on a plus note, you can purchase the literature singles which is what we’ve ended up doing.
Is Brave Writer enough is a common question.
The answer will depend on how your homeschool and your kids.
Over time I went from being a major fan of the relaxed elements of this curriculum to wanting something more concrete with more depth.
This curriculum became too relaxed.
It started with Partnership in Writing that didn’t work well for us. While we enjoy the copywork passages, we still added spelling and other writing. We’ve since used Writing with Ease and WriteShop (Writing with Skill was too big of a jump after Writing with Ease) and have since preferred Fix it Grammar and IEW for writing.
Our family wanted the writing mechanics in our homeschool, although we also enjoy adding in elements of the Brave Writer lifestyle and we still do some of literature guides a year.
Another con- it’s very expensive.
We enjoyed the Boomerang as our daughter got older but the online classes are way too much
As our kids got older and needed more writing instruction, Brave Writer wants you to sign up for their online writing courses. They are honestly very expensive, $199-249 for a one month course which means you’ll be spending a lot if your student takes multiple a year.
Although I do believe a good curriculum is worth spending a couple hundred dollars a year per subject such as writing, I spend that much in a year, not a month.
Have you tried this curriculum?
What did you like or not like about it?
So I heard Julie speak last year and was really intrigued. Honestly though, I was overwhelmed with how to come at this curriculum. So having you break it down by just buying one helps a lot! My question though is: do I need the Writer’s Jungle to understand how to teach just one of the literature guide? Thanks for this blog.
Hi Wendy, what an amazing experience to hear Julie speak! You don’t need the Writer’s Jungle to use the Arrows/Dart/Boomerang, in fact, Julie writes a wonderful guide that goes along with them to explain how to use them. I didn’t buy the writer’s jungle until after 2 years of using Brave Writer, and I do enjoy it was a resource, but you can get a lot of great information from her YouTube/podcasts/website and the new brave learner home. I started with Quiver of Arrows (which is now the dart) then Jot it Down, then I ventured deeper into BW. Best of luck!
I truly love Julie Bogart’s offerings. (Also, love chatting with her on my podcast.) Julie teaches writing in a way that replicates the adult writer’s voice development.
It’s real writing.
Not teaching basic building blocks of writing and hoping kids remember the parts of a sentence— which, not coincidentally, I did not! Nor do care. (Even though I write thousands and thousands of words every week.)
My kids have also taken some of her online courses. Though they may be pricey compared to a basic written curriculum, the effort that the writing coaches implement in their interactions with the kids and parents means that everyone learns to write.
Moms learn how to teach writing because they come to understand the important elements of writing and kids learn to share their thoughts and feelings and interests on paper while expanding their understanding, offering logical argument, even critiquing their own writing, and their own thoughts.
She offers a unique way to develop written communication strategies –– and just so you know, I am not an affiliate. I just genuinely appreciate her work.
Still, two of my kids really didn’t like that approach to learning how to write.
Naturally, this is why I did not continue taking classes.
However, my daughter, who attended the high school level essay writing courses garnered immense confidence in her writing skills and confidence because of those courses— before she attended college classes.
And yes, unquestionably, Julie is a stellar thought leader in the home education community.