The Lifestyle: This is an all-encompassing term for the approach that Brave Writer takes. The program emphasizes that language is something that we live and breathe, not simply a school subject. The Brave Writer Lifestyle includes word play, art galleries, poetry teas, movie nights, and deep conversations alongside books and writing. These things can all be incorporated into a homeschool with no need for products, and are a great way to explore whether Brave Writer's approach is for you with no cash outlay. The best summary can be found by looking through the pieces on the left side of this Brave Writer page.
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| Setting up for a poetry tea |
The Writer's Jungle: This is the original product from the company. It is a parent manual, and lays out the philosophy and road map for everything from pre-writing through high school. It is very much a "big picture" book, with fairly little implementation guidance, meant to guide people in creating their own custom language arts program in their home. If you want some guidance and to otherwise do your own thing, this is the product for you. Otherwise, I suggest you start with one of the writing pieces in the next paragraph and come back to this after you settle in a bit with Brave Writer.
The Writing Project Books: These are Jot it Down, Partnership Writing, and Faltering Ownership. Each of these contain ten writing project ideas, with ideas on how to implement them. Jot it Down is a bit different from the other two, as it assumes that the child is not yet writing, or is an emergent writer, and therefore focuses on the child learning skills such as ordering information, retelling stories, and beginning to express themselves in a logical manner with words, all while the parent is doing the bulk of the physical writing. In Partnership Writing and Faltering Ownership, the assumption is that the child is doing all of their own writing, with the parent providing encouragement and guidance. For PW and FO, most projects are meant to take four weeks, including time to select topics, do research, write, and revise. The program emphasizes that fewer well thought out pieces are superior to many rushed pieces of writing. I believe that the writing project books are the star of the Brave Writer program, and if you want to try just one product, most people should start with one of these. Each one spends the first half the book summarizing the parts of The Writer's Jungle philosophy that is applicable to that stage of writing, so they make an excellent place to jump in.
The Literature and Grammar Program: These are Quiver of Arrows, The Arrow, Pouch of Boomerangs, and The Boomerang. Each guide covers one book, has copywork/dictation each week for four weeks, and a literary topic/device to discuss. The newer ones (which you can recognize by their higher prices) are better formatted and include topics for Big Juicy Conversations (discussion questions). Grammar is taught through the copywork and dictation. These can be done in any order, and therefore I would encourage people to choose ones that correspond to books they are excited to share with their children.
The Online Classes: We have not done any of these, so I include them here only because I know they are fairly popular. Reviews on them consistently say that they are very encouraging, and the teachers are friendly, but that the feedback on writing is so encouraging that it doesn't have the constructive criticism that is often needed for writers to further develop. Therefore, I am under the impression that these are best for reluctant and struggling writers.
Note that I did not include The Wand in the listings above. We did not use it and I've been told it is very different from all other Brave Writer products, so I do not feel able to speak about it.
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