There are many benefits to including copywork in your curriculum. Here are a few:
If you choose great copywork pieces, your children will benefit by exposure and experience. Incorporating this into a student's subjects will increase learning opportunities. Here is handwriting paper and copywork for any style of writing.
It's also a good thing our kids are home and can take a longer, more relaxed approach to becoming legible in cursive writing. Benefits and practical help:
I don't believe we should let our kids' handwriting look like scrawl, but I don't believe it needs to look like art either. I think we should teach our kids excellence in all they do, but not stress out if their handwriting is not a work of art by the time they are ten. Time is on our side.
Scripture, of course, is great copywork. We can never underestimate the power of the Word of God in our children's hearts and minds. It is the beginning of wisdom and understanding. In fact, speaking of copying, Jesus had something to say about that. He copied His Father. He only did what He saw His Father doing--John 5:19 says "So Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.'" We would do well to teach our children to copy Jesus.
God bless you this week as you continue being good stewards of God's children and keeping them Home Where They Belong.
~Deborah
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Raising Real Men
We're writers, yet we seldom use a pen and paper any more. The keyboard is much faster, the electronic forms are easily corrected and easily shared, and there's no question of legibility. Yet, we still believe there is value in teaching kids to read and write in cursive.
Once upon a time, of course, handwriting was the norm. Even the most important legal documents were engraved in beautiful, regular script--consider the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, for a start! A person's education and culture might be judged by his penmanship, and a flowing Spencerian handwriting was a sign of sophistication.
As a practical matter, it's no longer a critical necessity--skill with a QWERTY keyboard has largely replaced it! But it's still a useful skill to cultivate:
It allows you to read historic documents in the original form. Not just the Magna Carta or the Declaration, there are treasure troves of personal correspondence and public records which are carefully written in cursive. One of our family treasures is a journal of the daily life of an ancestor's farm in the 1850's--along with graffiti by his young son and a nephew--all in cursive.
It allows you to make--and share--notes quickly. Shorthand is a useful tool, but it's often difficult to read another person's shorthand--sometimes even your own! So the ability to quickly transcribe a lecture, sermon, shopping list, or a longer idea, is a great life skill.
Timed-testing situations aren't going away. Definitely, teach keyboarding skills, but remember that essay questions are a reality of testing in high school and college. Don't demand your 12-year-old to do everything in long-hand, but remember that sooner or later, the ability to push pencil across paper quickly will mean points on a test--and maybe dollars in financial aid for college!
Legibility is the new beauty. To be honest, some of the most gorgeous historical handwriting is still difficult to read! For daily use, we teach a simplified italic style of cursive (we like Getty-Dubay Italics), which is easily adapted to a calligraphic lettering, if artistic effect is desired. For us, speed and legibility are more important than pure aesthetic effect!
Don't sweat the variations. Our teachers in school were very particular about the shapes of letters, but as we grew to adulthood we naturally adapted our handwriting to styles we liked. You may have certain capital letters that are unique, you might cross your 7's, or use a dash instead of a dot on top of your "i"--as long as it's readable, let your student experiment and make his handwriting his own! And don't worry if printed letters and broken connectors appear--again, speed and legibility are the point.
Your friends,
Hal and Melanie
For weekly encouragement to make Biblical family life a practical reality in your home, check out our podcast--new every Monday evening, and over a hundred shows in the archives! Come to Making Biblical Family Life Practical at the Ultimate Homeschool Radio Network or on iTunes.
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The Familyman
I'm just going to make this short and sweet. If you want to teach cursive, great. If you don't want to teach cursive, that's just as great.
Mom, God made you smart enough to know what's best for your kids. Don't let me, school experts, or best friends pressure you into doing something that you don't feel is necessary.
Oh, there are plenty of those kinds of people pressuring you. They mean well and have good arguments, but God made you smart enough to figure out what's best for your kids (and for you), what they'll need in the future, and what they won't.
Got it?! Good.
Have a great, guilt-free day of enjoying your children. Spring is here!
Be real,
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Free
Homeschooling a rebel?
There is HOPE. Both of these ebooks, written by TOS Magazine
Senior Editor Deborah Wuehler, will open your eyes, make you cry,
and point you to the Source of hope and help. FREE TO ANYONE:
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Free
Click here and get your free ebook:
7 Things You Should Know When Choosing Homeschool
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Free
Share this newsletter with a friend, and be sure to let those CONSIDERING homeschooling know about the enormous FREE info-pack which awaits them here: www.TryHomeschooling.com.
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A division of The Old Schoolhouse� Magazine
Did you know? Every class is INCLUDED for members!
No limits.
SchoolhouseTeachers.com has handwriting beginning in pre-K and Kindergarten, and copywork for students up through middle school. Beginning Handwriting provides foundational skills for your little learners--things like how to hold a pencil, to tips and tricks for remembering which letter is which! Everyday Copywork (preschool-middle school) offers more than 200 printable worksheets for print and cursive, and new worksheets are being added. Plus, we have Everyday Spanish Copywork for the kids who want to practice their Spanish skills, or for Spanish-speaking students who want to practice their handwriting.
Let SchoolhouseTeachers.com help you teach your children! Check out our Considering Membership page, then sign up and try us for 30 days for only $1. If you have a question, chat with us live on the site, or send an email to Customer Service.
One membership to SchoolhouseTeachers.com serves your entire family, regardless of how many children you are homeschooling or their ages. There are no per-child fees or additional fees for textbooks, and courses are not live, so you can start them at any time. If you or someone you know is interested in teaching a class on our site, please contact Executive Editor Bonnie Rose Hudson at bhudson@theoldschoolhouse.com.
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Announcement
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Contest Corner
For the month of March 2016
Patriotic Penmanship, Grade 1, by Mary Ellen Tedrow from Laurelwood Books, is a single workbook to help teach manuscript writing on the first grade level. The book consists of sixty-five pages. This book can be used alone, but is also in a series of higher grade levels, if you wish to continue. This book uses scripture, hymns, and words from patriots to teach handwriting skills. It is set up in thirty lessons that start with a short sentence, followed by letter practice. Next you have number practice, keywords, word pairs, and then the full quote. There are tracing words, then room to write on your own. The price of the book is $12.95. ( . . .)
There are several pros of this book. One, it is Christian based, so that always earns a point in my book. However, this book also uses quotes from famous patriots as well. I really enjoyed that, because it actually gave us some starting points to expand our learning into other areas, such as history. My daughter thought it was neat to see the quotes, and to be able to look them up to learn a little more about the speaker. Also, I like how each lesson is set up--instead of just opening a book with A-Z learning, you have actual lessons to work on. This helped break it up for my daughter, so she knew what to expect. She is dyslexic, and never ending pages overwhelm her. Most of the wording was simple and fairly easy to sound out. The work also progresses through the book to show improvement in word and sentence writing, and not just copying letters. This is a great book for Christian homeschoolers.
You can win Grade 1 for your homeschool!
TO ENTER: Email Heather (hmader@thehomeschoolmagazine.com) with your name, mailing address, and phone number for contact purposes, with the subject line, "Patriotic Penmanship" for a chance to win* it for your family!
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