What is the “Brave Writer Lifestyle?”
Simply put, it’s a very rich way to educate. A lot of it is Charlotte Mason inspired with a twist.
Below is the list straight from the Brave Writer website:
- Poetry Teatime
- Reading Aloud
- Big Juicy Conversations
- Freewriting
- Literary Elements
- Nature Journaling
- Writing Projects
- Art Appreciation
- Movies and Television
- Copywork
- Dictation
- Shakespeare
- One on One Time
- Jot It Down
- Language Games
- Sharing Your Writing
We haven’t started Shakespeare yet, and I haven’t been super consistent with art appreciation (we’ll get there), but we pretty much do everything else.
We use Brave Writer writing projects and the Arrow and Boomerang guides for read aloud, copywork, dictation, literary elements, grammar, and “big juicy conversations.”
We do Poetry Teatime every week.
We are using the Wild Explorers Club for our nature study/journaling.
For games, we do more than just language games… and what is shown in the pictures below are just a few. The kids will be getting a bunch of games for Christmas to add to the pile.
We have movie nights every week together that bring about good conversation.
We do Friday Freewrites. Sometimes this means that I give them a topic, and sometimes this means that I just set a timer and tell them to write. I give them the option for a prompt either way.
In addition to this:
The kids do arts and crafts whenever they want.
The boys do hands on things while I read aloud.
The kids dig in to things that they are interested in. We use some curriculum for some things, but I give them options. For example, Ethan really wants to do chemistry but I know I can’t teach it. So, I bought chemistry and physics from Master Books.
I moved the food jars that I had in my cabinet and made it into a Brave Writer Lifestyle cabinet (and there are some things on our “homeschooling cart” next to it).
Everything fits in the pantry, but it was tight.
The top two shelves house all of our Poetry Teatime stuff. Tea cups and saucers, lots of tea, hot chocolate, and a tea pot.
The dishes either came from Goodwill or my mom or Meemaw. I love them.
The bottom shelf houses our craft stuff and nature journals.
The cabinet at the bottom has some games (I’ll switch these out often), Math U See manipulatives, nature books, and a dictionary and thesaurus.
On our “homeschooling cart” is more tea, nature study books, and poetry books.
Also on the homeschooling cart is the hands on stuff for read aloud time.
I’m constantly updating and making things work even better for our family. I just love where I’ve landed with our life and homeschool!
Simply Courtney 