So glad! You’ve got this. Hope next week goes well. Don’t remember if I said this in the video but give yourself one month to mess up and figure it out. Month 2 will go way smoother!
Thanks for sharing this in such depth, it really helped clarify what a dart looks like in practice. I too am most familiar with open and go, scripted language arts programs, but I keep being drawn to Brave Writer. I’d love if you could share a bit about Jot It Down and how that is implemented. I can’t seem to find a lot about it!
I’ll make a video for you on Jot It Down. Ya there’s not much out there! You can find some on the Brave Writer Facebook page though. I will say even though this isn’t open and go, it does have parts in it you can say as is, and after a few months it takes less going over before sitting down with the kids.
Thanks for the feedback! As a follow up we are still loving the darts and have now done 6 diff books. It’s easy to take a month off of these and do something totally different as well which I like. We have definitely read more great books out loud since doing Brave Writer too, so that’s another win!
There isn’t a reading schedule, but we generally try to read about 1/4 the book a week, enough to finish in about a month. Sometimes we take longer, or finish early. You could also make bookmarks in your reading book to align with each weeks passage in the dart. That would ensure you’ve read up to that spot in your book before beginning copywork or grammar in that weeks dart. But to be honest, we just read at a pace we enjoy as fast or slow as we want to.
Thank you! Very helpful! Im not so intimidated by things now lol. Also, where did you have this printed and bound? Will you be posting videos of your curriculum choices for the 22-23 year?
I printed this at home with our Epson printer, and bound with our ProClick binding machine and spines. The cheaper option would be to use a 3 ring binder and hole punch. I will be posting our curriculum picks for the year on the blog. I’d be happy to do a video too! We are continuing with the darts though. They’ve been awesome and we got through about 6 this year.
We read the book all month long while doing the dart week by week. I know people who do it both ways, and it doesn’t really matter as far as being able to do the dart. Even if kids haven’t heard the copywork passage that comes from the book, they can still copy it, talk about the grammar inside, do the dictation etc. the only thing you wouldn’t do till after the whole book is finished is a book party at the end. I typically start reading the book and go at whatever pace we are enjoying reading it…with a goal to finish in 1 month. So mentally I divide the book into 4 chunks, but sometimes we finish sooner or later than a month. Some people try to read up through the next copywork passage before starting a new week in the dart, but that’s also not necessary.
I didn’t. I don’t think you need to buy it at all to get started…but I’d try and listen to her podcasts when you can go get a better feel of the brave writer lifestyle. I did buy the writers jungle initially which is the old version of growing brave writers. I haven’t read and kind of regret buying. It was just too much information for me to take in when I was also trying to figure out how to read and use the darts and joy it down. Now, I understand it’s more of a written collection of the brave writer lifestyle and a one stop shop for a lot of the free information you can hear her now talk about on her podcasts and such. Great info probably, but just way too much to sift through so it’s sat unread. Hope that helps!
This was great thank you do you find dart was good for your grade one and two year olds. According to ages my gr two would be in the quill at age 7 so just wondering how you found this for the age ranges vs their grades.
I haven’t used the quill but I’d say the sweet spot for us with the dart was beginning around age 8/9, around 2nd grade. Each child is so different, but I wouldn’t have wanted my now 7 year old (3rd child) doing any formal grammar from darts this year because we were focusing more on learning to read and copywork from Handwriting Without Tears. When my 2nd child joined in on the darts with her older brother she was around age 7, but it was more of a tag along situation, and I let her skip a lot of the grammar instruction. Her big brother definitely soaked up more since he was older.
They don’t need to be great readers yet! You’ll be doing the reading out loud for each book to them at this point, and reading from the guide as you point things out in the passage. Copywork can be done without reading well too. My new reader who’s 6.5 doesn’t get some things as easily like spelling and still needs help with dictation using those spelling words. I would say I probably wouldn’t focus much on grammar or punctuation found in the Dart till they are beginner readers, but you can definitely use it if you want.
Hi , Thank you so much..I'm still looking for a good language curriculum. SO can u please list the specific things that this curriculum cover does it cover grammer, reading ?
This is a literature guide that will cover reading out loud as a family, weekly copywork, dictation, and each guide contains grammar principles you can talk about or point out from the copywork passage. To get “enough” variety of grammar in, you’d need to use several darts within a year. Each dart only covers a few. Brave writer recently made a master list on the site listing which grammar is covered in each dart. This doesn’t really contain spelling or creative writing.
For copywork at the dart level, you’ll find short copywork written at the start of each week(from the book you’re reading), maybe 2-3 sentences. If your kids are needing more, you could add to that. Arrows are geared toward 11-12 year olds if you need books geared toward that age, and have more copywork. Hope that helps!
It’s shorter in the darts, usually a 2-3 sentences. One per week. The arrows are closer to a paragraph, but the copywork length can vary even within darts or within arrows so there may be times you’d want to add a sentence or subtract one depending on the kid. This year, we are going to be doing something a little diff since we are transitioning to a more Charlotte Mason homeschool through Ambleside Online, and so the kids will actually increase copywork to daily. I’ll have them do the dart copywork on Monday still, (or Monday/tue if it’s too long) and then we’ll pick something from a book they are reading for the other days to copy. Not sure how long, but something that takes them 5-10 min.
I think there is a link in your purchase confirmation email (check spam if you didn’t get one) that takes you to a page with all your downloads from that purchase.
Hello I am new to this , is there a book I need purchase on Amazon that goes with each month ? I saw there a link for book . And what is the copy book? Is it come with this monthly printable ?Thank you
You can buy the monthly book from Amazon, but I get ours from the library. The copywork comes in the Dart and we just copy it into a notebook of our own. The Dart also has nice wide ruled pages in the back if you want to use those for copywork.
Thank you for jumping right into it. I clicked on three other videos before yours but they all took too long to get to the point
Thank you! We just finished our first week of Jot it Down and the Dart. I appreciate seeing how you did all of this.
I just sat down to plan our first Dart week and I was LOST! Thank you so much for this video -- SO helpful :)
So glad! You’ve got this. Hope next week goes well. Don’t remember if I said this in the video but give yourself one month to mess up and figure it out. Month 2 will go way smoother!
Ugh! Thank you! Finally someone who can explain brave rider to me so it makes sense!! 🤪
So glad! Thanks.
Thanks for sharing this in such depth, it really helped clarify what a dart looks like in practice. I too am most familiar with open and go, scripted language arts programs, but I keep being drawn to Brave Writer. I’d love if you could share a bit about Jot It Down and how that is implemented. I can’t seem to find a lot about it!
I’ll make a video for you on Jot It Down. Ya there’s not much out there! You can find some on the Brave Writer Facebook page though. I will say even though this isn’t open and go, it does have parts in it you can say as is, and after a few months it takes less going over before sitting down with the kids.
Thank you for the excellent review and flip through and explanation. You just about convinced me that this is what I'm looking for.
Thanks for the feedback! As a follow up we are still loving the darts and have now done 6 diff books. It’s easy to take a month off of these and do something totally different as well which I like. We have definitely read more great books out loud since doing Brave Writer too, so that’s another win!
Thanks for this video! It would be great to see a look inside the Jot it Down and how you do that also!
I would love to make that video in a few months after we’ve finished a few more of the projects!
Big thanks! Seems so much easier now that you walked us through it.
Yes it’s doable! You got this. 👍
This was so helpful! Thanks so much
Awesome!
Can you please go through the first week of the dart: The Beatryce Prophecy. I would like to see step by step instructions
Just bought the One and Only Bob Dart! I didn’t see a reading schedule. How do you plan your chapters/pages, to align with the curriculum? ✨
There isn’t a reading schedule, but we generally try to read about 1/4 the book a week, enough to finish in about a month. Sometimes we take longer, or finish early. You could also make bookmarks in your reading book to align with each weeks passage in the dart. That would ensure you’ve read up to that spot in your book before beginning copywork or grammar in that weeks dart. But to be honest, we just read at a pace we enjoy as fast or slow as we want to.
Thank you! Very helpful! Im not so intimidated by things now lol. Also, where did you have this printed and bound? Will you be posting videos of your curriculum choices for the 22-23 year?
I printed this at home with our Epson printer, and bound with our ProClick binding machine and spines. The cheaper option would be to use a 3 ring binder and hole punch. I will be posting our curriculum picks for the year on the blog. I’d be happy to do a video too! We are continuing with the darts though. They’ve been awesome and we got through about 6 this year.
very helpful!!
This was so helpful. How do you add the reading in? Do you read the book first and then do writing after, or do you do them both simultaneously?
We read the book all month long while doing the dart week by week. I know people who do it both ways, and it doesn’t really matter as far as being able to do the dart. Even if kids haven’t heard the copywork passage that comes from the book, they can still copy it, talk about the grammar inside, do the dictation etc. the only thing you wouldn’t do till after the whole book is finished is a book party at the end. I typically start reading the book and go at whatever pace we are enjoying reading it…with a goal to finish in 1 month. So mentally I divide the book into 4 chunks, but sometimes we finish sooner or later than a month. Some people try to read up through the next copywork passage before starting a new week in the dart, but that’s also not necessary.
Thank you so much for this! Wondering if you bought Growing Brave Writers and if you felt it was necessary to have?
I didn’t. I don’t think you need to buy it at all to get started…but I’d try and listen to her podcasts when you can go get a better feel of the brave writer lifestyle.
I did buy the writers jungle initially which is the old version of growing brave writers. I haven’t read and kind of regret buying. It was just too much information for me to take in when I was also trying to figure out how to read and use the darts and joy it down. Now, I understand it’s more of a written collection of the brave writer lifestyle and a one stop shop for a lot of the free information you can hear her now talk about on her podcasts and such. Great info probably, but just way too much to sift through so it’s sat unread. Hope that helps!
This was great thank you do you find dart was good for your grade one and two year olds. According to ages my gr two would be in the quill at age 7 so just wondering how you found this for the age ranges vs their grades.
I haven’t used the quill but I’d say the sweet spot for us with the dart was beginning around age 8/9, around 2nd grade. Each child is so different, but I wouldn’t have wanted my now 7 year old (3rd child) doing any formal grammar from darts this year because we were focusing more on learning to read and copywork from Handwriting Without Tears. When my 2nd child joined in on the darts with her older brother she was around age 7, but it was more of a tag along situation, and I let her skip a lot of the grammar instruction. Her big brother definitely soaked up more since he was older.
@@LizBlueandHazel thank you for your input I resonate with how you do things so I look forward to follow along during our journey.
Thanks so much for the video! How long does the lesson usually take?
We spent 10-15 minutes or so, plus extra time if they were doing copywork.
How well does a child need to read to start the Dart?
They don’t need to be great readers yet! You’ll be doing the reading out loud for each book to them at this point, and reading from the guide as you point things out in the passage. Copywork can be done without reading well too. My new reader who’s 6.5 doesn’t get some things as easily like spelling and still needs help with dictation using those spelling words. I would say I probably wouldn’t focus much on grammar or punctuation found in the Dart till they are beginner readers, but you can definitely use it if you want.
@@LizBlueandHazel thank you! I want to do BW but I struggled with what I should do until they reach the age when it’s designed for them.
Hi ,
Thank you so much..I'm still looking for a good language curriculum. SO can u please list the specific things that this curriculum cover does it cover grammer, reading ?
This is a literature guide that will cover reading out loud as a family, weekly copywork, dictation, and each guide contains grammar principles you can talk about or point out from the copywork passage. To get “enough” variety of grammar in, you’d need to use several darts within a year. Each dart only covers a few. Brave writer recently made a master list on the site listing which grammar is covered in each dart. This doesn’t really contain spelling or creative writing.
Hello, I’m interested in doing dart for my incoming 4th and 5th graders but I’m kind of confused what work or “copywork” would be for them?
For copywork at the dart level, you’ll find short copywork written at the start of each week(from the book you’re reading), maybe 2-3 sentences. If your kids are needing more, you could add to that. Arrows are geared toward 11-12 year olds if you need books geared toward that age, and have more copywork. Hope that helps!
How long is the copy work?
It’s shorter in the darts, usually a 2-3 sentences. One per week. The arrows are closer to a paragraph, but the copywork length can vary even within darts or within arrows so there may be times you’d want to add a sentence or subtract one depending on the kid. This year, we are going to be doing something a little diff since we are transitioning to a more Charlotte Mason homeschool through Ambleside Online, and so the kids will actually increase copywork to daily. I’ll have them do the dart copywork on Monday still, (or Monday/tue if it’s too long) and then we’ll pick something from a book they are reading for the other days to copy. Not sure how long, but something that takes them 5-10 min.
Ok I bought Encyclopedia Boy Brown and didn’t get anything to download or anything. How does this work ?
I think there is a link in your purchase confirmation email (check spam if you didn’t get one) that takes you to a page with all your downloads from that purchase.
Hello I am new to this , is there a book I need purchase on Amazon that goes with each month ? I saw there a link for book . And what is the copy book? Is it come with this monthly printable ?Thank you
You can buy the monthly book from Amazon, but I get ours from the library. The copywork comes in the Dart and we just copy it into a notebook of our own. The Dart also has nice wide ruled pages in the back if you want to use those for copywork.