Writer’s Jungle

I bought Brave Writer a couple years ago! I used it faithfully for about a year then I started learning more about Charlotte Mason and let it go by the wayside. It’s funny you should ask this question because I was thinking about picking it up again.

Now that I’ve been away from it awhile I can see similarities between CM methods and Brave Writer. Short lesson, don’t push the child, let him find his own “writer’s” voice, grammar doesn’t have to drag out for years, etc.

My daughter (10 yo) really enjoyed the “assignments” I gave her. The last year thet I used it our monthly assignments were: 1.Keen Observation Exercise 2. Compare/Contrast Jamestown settlement to Plymouth settlement (we were already studying that in history) 3. Write and illustrate a poem 4. Cartoon/Comic strip (hers was about something she was learning in science) 5. Start a list 6. Oral report based on something she was learnin in history class (this ia narration with a family audience) 7. Word Collage

8. Radio Drama (We didn’t end up doing this…something in my husband’s family came up)

As you can see the projects are very unlike regular report writing and research papers. She does recommend the more “formal” writing projects like those for the later years. I apperciate the CM style of language arts. We use Spelling Wisdom from this site, it’s a wonderful, and brief, lesson without meaningless lists of unrelated words. We do copywork from a thematic copywork book (all about nature). Brave Writer also suggests doing copywork and dictation on a weekly basis and she (Julie) is all about good literature for children.

We did the Tuesday Tea Time which was really fun. We drank tea and read poetry together every Tuesday. You also use that time to read your current family read-aloud book too. The hallmark of BW (as Julie puts it) is read alouds for the children, and not just little ones the teens too! It is expensive but it my opinion totally worth it. This program has CM principle sprinkled throughout, plus its a GREAT writing program. I hesitate to call it a program because it’s not really. I am looking forward to re-starting it.

As I said I like the CM method, but I would like to have a tad bit more “structure”. Brave Writer, like I said is not a program but it gives the chld an opportunity to use what he’s learned from all that wonderful literature reading.