What is the Brave Writer lifestyle?
This is a common question for those that are new to Brave Writer. We’ve enjoyed the Brave Writer lifestyle for over 3 years now and I love it. I’ll explain how we enjoy Brave Writer, what part of the curriculum we use and how, and how to adapt it to suit your family.
Julie Boggart, creator of Brave Writer, 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 curriculum and lifestyle that she created celebrated it’s 20th anniversary this year! She began with the Writers Jungle, and and now offers a great curriculum, a fun podcast and homeschooling writing resources.
–> Learn more about the writing stages, curriculum and online classes on the Brave Writer website
How we enjoy Brave Writer
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:
- Quiver of Arrows and Arrow Guides for our literature. I’ve purchased the year bundle, and purchased 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.
- 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 make Brave Writer work in 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. I purchased a few Arrows, then the Quiver bundle, then Jot it Down then a year later the Writer’s Jungle. In the future, and as the kids get older, I could see us adding in her online writing courses.
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. Because I resource them often, I had the Writer’s Jungle and Jot it Down writing projects printed and bound locally.
Have you tried Brave Writer?
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!