I’ve never considered myself to follow a particular homeschooling philosophy. I like to think of myself more as an eclectic homeschooler, using a little of this and a little of that sprinkled as needed for a custom fit experience. However, if I had to pick one homeschool resource, philosophy, or style that describes our homeschool best, it would be Brave Schooling.
“Brave Schooling” is a term that has come about from resources put out by Julie Bogart, creator of Brave Writer. Brave Writer is a language arts resource for your whole family. It focuses on relationships and building language skills, but offers a compete language arts curriculum. Let’s take a look at all of the Brave Writer programs as if we’re sitting side-by-side in the video below.
The Writer’s Jungle: This is a general guide for teaching writing to your child. It gives tips and ideas, and helps reset your thinking when it comes to writing instruction. It is the foundation to the Brave Writer Program. It doesn’t have a schedule with specific assignments, rather it sets the stage and shares some ideas that you can implement in a manner that works best for your family.
Writing Programs: Each guide contains quite a bit of teacher and lifestyle ideas and materials along with ten writing assignments for your child to work on.
- Jot it Down (Ages 5-8)
- Partnership Writing (Ages 9-10)
- Faltering Ownership (Ages 11-12)
- Help for High School (Ages 13-18)
Mechanics and Literature: Each issue focuses on one great book and copywork from that book. Use the copywork passage as a chance to explore grammar, literary elements (what makes a good book good), spelling and more. Each guide also comes with discussion questions, a writing project and book party ideas.
- Dart (Ages 8-10)
- Arrow (Ages 11-12)
- Boomerang (Ages 13-14)
- Slingshot (Ages 15-18)
The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning, and Life by Julie Bogart: This is an an excellent book that I recommend for all homeschooling families. It will challenge you to grow, focusing on relationships. Every time I read it I challenge myself to grow in some area. I’m sure you will too.
Brave Learner Home Membership: Brave Learner Home is an online membership only community. I like to think of it as both professional development for homeschooling parents and a community of encouragement with both veteran and currently homeschooling mamas.
I certainly wouldn’t consider Brave Writer to be a traditional approach to Language Arts, but for our family it has been both effective and life-changing. If you do decide to jump into “Brave Schooling,” I recommend taking it slow. Work on transforming one aspect of your homeschool at a time, and more importantly, press into your family.
What type of homeschooler would you consider yourself? What books or philosophies have had the biggest impact on the way you homeschool? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
Ticket to Learning 