Is Brave Writer Enough?

Recently, in my Facebook group, someone asked for language arts curriculum recommendations. I said we’d continue using Brave Writer for at least the next couple years (7th and 8th grade, which is what she asked about). In reply to my response, a new homeschooler asked if I thought Brave Writer was “enough”.

I replied with a resounding yes!

And here’s why… 

When you live a Brave Writer lifestyle, language arts is never just Brave Writer. Honestly, we’ve kind of been slackers when it comes to doing our Friday Free Writes, and Arrows,  or putting The Writer’s Jungle into practice… in fact, it’s been a month or so since we’ve had Poetry Tea Time.

Here’s what has happened though… and how Brave Writer permeates all parts and moments of your life.  If you are brave enough to let it. 😉

My kiddo decided she wanted to go to a concert in Dallas not long ago. (She decided three days before the concert that she wanted to go, and just FYI, Dallas is 5 hours from where we live.)

She put together a slide show, with all the pros and cons, the whys and hows of making this trip. It was quite persuasive. Mind you, we’ve never “studied” the persuasive essay… but she is a strong willed kiddo who likes to get her way. She did a pretty good job of it… in fact, the ticket price was pretty reasonable, I almost decided to go. <3

One thing I noticed in her persuasive slide show was she used the wrong “which” in her writing. She used witch where it should have been which. I was so proud of her for putting the whole thing together I didn’t say a word about it.

The next day I wrote the definition of homophones on our big whiteboard. I used which/which/witch as an example, and then I left a big space where we could fill in more as we continued through life. I did not make a big deal out of it… I just started remarking on homophones.

When Hanna was little every time she’d see an airplane she’d scream AIRPLANE. I’ve kind of taken that approach with many things in our world. It began with alliteration, now it’s homophones. Every time I hear/see one I yell HOMOPHONE!! <3 Now she does too. Just yesterday we were visiting a relative in the hospital when she yelled out MAIL/MALE! Homophone!

A couple of weeks ago we borrowed the game Quiddler from our awesome little library that has a pretty killer selection of games.

We started playing and both fell in love with this game. We of course purchased our own copy before we had to return it to the library. Basically, you play 8 rounds. The first round starts with each person getting 3 cards. The cards have letters on them instead of numbers. The object is to create a word or words from the cards in your hand with 1 card left over that you can discard. You can not “go down” until you can use every card in your hand. Each hand you get more cards. Sometimes Way too often that leaves you with awesome words and a couple random letters you don’t think you can do anything with. But… that’s where the dictionary comes in. We’ve agreed to use dictionary.com on my phone as our dictionary, so what it says goes. She often finds herself looking up letters trying to create words. Did you know sev is actually a word! I almost always challenge her about these tiny words, and ask her what they mean. It’s a reasonable request in the game. She tells me the definition and usually the part of speech it is too.

Oh… and did I mention you can not use prefixes, suffixes and abbreviations in this game? Well, we of course had to look those up to figure out what they were, and what words they covered. 😉 We also created a house rule you can’t use symbols. She made that rule when I wanted to use Fe as a word… she was very annoyed later when I reminded her of her rule when she wanted to use Au. 😀

We spend an hour or two, most days, playing this game. She has to think about words, letters, wrap her brain around language.  She hit me with the word “clique” the other day. I was pretty impressed. She has to think smart, play strategically… and did I mention she keeps score? She adds up her own hands, and then keeps score for the game. She has yet to refuse to “do math” while we’re playing. <3

Language is everywhere. If you open you mind to see it, you can’t NOT see it! I happen to love language. I love words. I believe in a large vocabulary. We nurture language in every way we can. I see language everywhere we go, every day. Yes, I absolutely think living a Brave Writer lifestyle is enough.

Now don’t ask me about math. 😉 I only wish I could see math in the same way I see language… if you have any ideas about that… please, let me know. 🙂