Wait, what? You hear nothing from me for months, and now two posts in a row? Welcome to the world of summer blogging . . . I know I just wrote my first blog post in months only yesterday, but today I have a big announcement.

Tomorrow evening (Tuesday, July 12th) I will be co-presenting a FREE online workshop (6:30 PST; 9:30 EST) with the talented Galit Breen (an actual TED-TALK EXPERT, people), author of Kindness Wins. Our topic? Ban the Summer Slide

We’re going to show you…

  • Hands on, actionable ways to help your children improve their writing
  • How to help with their writing + all learning without power struggles
  • How to turn summer down time into a tech use win
  • How to create systems in your home where writing + technology become tools for connecting (It’s true! We’ll show you how!)

Galit is THE expert on raising digital kids, teaching kids to use technology safely, effectively, and kindly; you do NOT want to miss out on learning from her!

If you can’t make it tomorrow evening, no worries, but make sure you sign up anyway because that’s the only way to get the replay, which you can watch in your own time. You can sign up easily (and ahem, free, remember!) right here.

So you guys probably know I kind of hate homework, right? So it’s kind of interesting and ironic that I’m participating in a workshop about keeping our kids’ academic skills fresh in the summer months. I mean, my most popular post of all times is “What We Choose Over Homework,” for crying out loud.

And full disclosure: my experience helping my 4th grander with her “weekly writing journal” last year was a little bit rough. I went into it thinking it would be awesome, because, hello, I’m a writer and she loves writing and we are totally going to bond over this.

But.

Power struggles erupted. I began to dread it, and so did she. I had high standards, and I let myself get too involved, and working on writing together was no longer fun. Teaching the craft of writing almost killed the joy of it for me. Yuck, right?

However, I learned a lot from it, and I want to share all this with you at the workshop tomorrow night. While Galit is going to work her tech-kid magic, I’ll be talking about how to work on writing with our kids without power struggles. I’ve learned a thing or two from my trial-and-error school year, believe me.

How to work with your child

AND!

I’m so excited to be unveiling the next HerStories Project online writing course! It’s brand new, and it will launch tomorrow during the workshop (teaser: those who are registered for the free webinar tomorrow night will get first dibs on enrollment with a huge discount and free bonuses, so make sure and register!)

It’s a class for parents to do with their kids, which I’m SO excited about. Here are the details:

Create, Connect, Reflect (1)

It’s a self-paced online course for parents of school-age/tween kids.

This class will provide opportunities for you as a parent writer (published, unpublished, professional, daily journal-er, private poet, whatever!) to:

    • Reflect on why you write
    • Reflect on your writing space, routine, and goals
    • Confront your writing saboteurs and inner critic to better care for yourself as a parent-writer
    • Discover the difference between writing your story and your family’s story
    • Polish your writing craft
 For your child to:
  • Learn how to more effectively revise and edit their writing
  • Incorporate a variety of writing crafts to make their writing stand out
  • Practice different writing styles
  • Keep their skills polished and fresh during the summer break
  • Get excited about writing

For you AND your child to:

  • Connect through writing
  • Participate in shared writing prompts, collaborative creation, and journaling together
  • Experience the joy of creation together in a new way

You can get all the details here on our class page. Remember, you can sign up during our workshop, and then the course will go on sale later this week, but without the super-cool discount and bonuses.

If you love writing in any capacity, and you want to share that with your child and find a new way to connect (because things start to get tougher during those tween years, and writing can be a much safer way to communicate and get close!), I hope you’ll consider joining me this summer! And my amazing daughter, going into 5th grade, will be our guest instructor; she is SO excited. See you soon!

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Let me know if you have any questions about the workshop or class!
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