If you combined Partnership Writing/FO and The Arrow...

[EKT]

Can you elaborate on how you combined them? I'm still deciding between Brave Writer's PW and FO for my rising 5th grader (she is a strong writer, so I'm thinking she'll lean more toward FO), but no matter which one I go with, I'd like to use it alongside (newer issues) of The Arrow. (I love that The Arrow is literature-based and has copywork, etc, so I definitely want to include this.) BUT, that is a lot of moving parts and I'm trying to visualize how to map it all out into a monthly schedule and still include other Brave Writer Lifestyle elements like Poetry Teatime and possibly the Friday Freewrites. (If I had my way, our homeschool day would be nothing but language arts, lol, but we still have to get all the other subjects in, so I'm trying to be sane about what I include.)

 

So, if you combined the two programs (and other BWL stuff), I'd love it if you could share the ways you scheduled it all out in a typical month. (And I'd love your general reviews of the materials as well, if you're inclined to share. BW is expensive, so I want to be totally certain it's right for us before I take the plunge.) Thanks in advance!

[newhsmom]

My kids have completed JID and PW, but we are starting FO next year.  I let them work on their projects everyday for as long as it took them.  Some projects were quick and others really took a long time.  We only occasionally use Arrows, even though I enjoy them.  The format of the Arrows is that there is one writing project a month.  I think you might want some flexibility to just be working on the Arrow writing project one week and maybe you take a break from FO that week.  The first 3 weeks of the Arrow are not very time consuming. You might want to print out the samples of both and see about how much work is typical.  One thing that I love about BW is that it is so flexible, make it work for you.  I never make it through all the writing projects in one year.  We just get as far as we can and then work on it some more the next year.  BW has been so enriching to our homeschool experience.  

[Farrar]

We combined them. Or, at least, I used the Arrow some and DIY'ed things in the Arrow style more often.

 

There is a sample schedule/routine in both PW and FO.

 

We adored PW. A few of the projects are on the young end for a 5th grader who is advanced with writing. However, most of them are so open ended. I think they're only too young if you go into them with young expectations, if that makes sense. Like, the make a catalog project - that can be pretty in depth, imaginative, enjoyable, etc. However, if you do into it thinking it's dorky and too young, of course it will be. I actually revisited that one with one of my 7th graders this year - he had studied all these crazy physics concepts and read a lot of Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku and I had him make a mini-catalog of "impossible" products that had descriptions that were advertising but also explained some of the physics behind them. It was really fun.

 

FO didn't work quite as well for us, honestly. The long term build up for the single research paper didn't happen for us. I liked a lot of the other projects (the book jacket was one that was surprisingly good) but I didn't adore it the way I did PW. On the other hand, it could be just right for your enthusiastic writer.

 

One of the things that makes it hard to talk about a typical month was that some projects went quickly and others took forever. But I'll give it a try.

 

We typically did poetry tea once or twice a month. We read a short story a month and discuss it at poetry tea.

We typically threw in freewrites whenever there wasn't something else going on, so at least three or four times a month.

We did dictation once a week. That was pretty steady.

The other days, we worked on the PW projects or sometimes on Arrow ones, though we always treated Arrow projects as process quickie kinds of things. Just a day of playing around with an idea. It wasn't like the PW projects where we would work on it over many days. Some of them could be - we just didn't do that.

[EKT]

My kids have completed JID and PW, but we are starting FO next year.  I let them work on their projects everyday for as long as it took them.  Some projects were quick and others really took a long time.  We only occasionally use Arrows, even though I enjoy them.  The format of the Arrows is that there is one writing project a month.  I think you might want some flexibility to just be working on the Arrow writing project one week and maybe you take a break from FO that week.  The first 3 weeks of the Arrow are not very time consuming. You might want to print out the samples of both and see about how much work is typical.  One thing that I love about BW is that it is so flexible, make it work for you.  I never make it through all the writing projects in one year.  We just get as far as we can and then work on it some more the next year.  BW has been so enriching to our homeschool experience.  

 

 

We combined them. Or, at least, I used the Arrow some and DIY'ed things in the Arrow style more often.

 

There is a sample schedule/routine in both PW and FO.

 

We adored PW. A few of the projects are on the young end for a 5th grader who is advanced with writing. However, most of them are so open ended. I think they're only too young if you go into them with young expectations, if that makes sense. Like, the make a catalog project - that can be pretty in depth, imaginative, enjoyable, etc. However, if you do into it thinking it's dorky and too young, of course it will be. I actually revisited that one with one of my 7th graders this year - he had studied all these crazy physics concepts and read a lot of Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku and I had him make a mini-catalog of "impossible" products that had descriptions that were advertising but also explained some of the physics behind them. It was really fun.

 

FO didn't work quite as well for us, honestly. The long term build up for the single research paper didn't happen for us. I liked a lot of the other projects (the book jacket was one that was surprisingly good) but I didn't adore it the way I did PW. On the other hand, it could be just right for your enthusiastic writer.

 

One of the things that makes it hard to talk about a typical month was that some projects went quickly and others took forever. But I'll give it a try.

 

We typically did poetry tea once or twice a month. We read a short story a month and discuss it at poetry tea.

We typically threw in freewrites whenever there wasn't something else going on, so at least three or four times a month.

We did dictation once a week. That was pretty steady.

The other days, we worked on the PW projects or sometimes on Arrow ones, though we always treated Arrow projects as process quickie kinds of things. Just a day of playing around with an idea. It wasn't like the PW projects where we would work on it over many days. Some of them could be - we just didn't do that.

 

Thank you!! These responses are so helpful!!