Homeschool Writing Review: Brave Writer KWI and One Thing Series

by Rebecca D-D
(Overland Park, KS, USA)

After trying various approaches, this former professional writer finally finds the perfect homeschool writing program for family.

For part of my professional career, I was paid to write. When my husband and I decided to homeschool, I tried various approaches to writing and, eventually burned not only a few of the kids out, but myself. For a year, I think that they simply learned writing through osmosis as I belabored how to do more than teach writing, but to also instill the love of it, in my children.

I stumbled upon the Brave Writer approach and hesitantly purchased the founder, Julie Bogart's, wonderful book, The Writer's Jungle. Her gentle and wise suggestions encouraged me to relax and I got brave enough this past winter to venture into one of the online writing courses at the BraveWriter website, which offers many other venues for enjoying the process of learning to write.

At first I "encouraged" (read: forced!) my oldest son to take an 8-week intermediate writing course (KWI) and he transformed from one who balked at writing into someone who did not seem to mind the activity. In the meantime, he met some like-minded adolescents who did not place writing at the top of their "fun things to do lists", a bonus I appreciated.

It was an especially cold winter and I elected to plunge into a 4-week session on Poetry, using it with all four children who are still at home, ranging in age from 6 to 14. We had such a good time that I tweaked the budget to enjoy another 4-week session which focused on Grammar. The teacher provided individual feedback, both directly and in a password-secured forum, and all of my children looked forward to reading or hearing what the other participants had written. With the online venue, we were able to be "in class" with people from Australia, Singapore and Japan. We continually refer to concepts we gleaned from these two short courses.

What really impressed me was that Julie Bogart, the mastermind behind Brave Writer, took time to e-mail me with some wonderful suggestions for my reluctant writer who ended up writing poetry that left my jaw dropped for days.

There was nothing scary about the classes, all of the kids could participate in their own way in age-appropriate ways and we all knew that it was for a very short and finite amount of time.

On a per-child basis, it was a true bargain! While we've sampled only a few of the online course offerings at Brave Writer, the options are many and I cannot imagine feeling dissatisfied with anything at the well-organized and informative website. Kudos to Julie and her amazing teachers!

Kudos to you for writing such a great review! Thanks for sharing your experience with Brave Writer homeschool writing curriculum. I love the details you provide – others will find your input so helpful! Happy Writing, Heather :)

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