There are some homeschooling activities that in their simplicity give me delight. One of those activities include my children’s copywork lessons. Charlotte Mason taught that a child learns grammar by doing copywork. Copying over selections from fine literature, Bible Scripture, or Founding Documents into a notebook allows the child to pay attention to the details of good writing. In our family this copywork becomes a penmanship lesson as well because we require our boys to write slowly and carefully. We usually choose short selections as I would rather them do a good job on a small piece than sloppy work on a larger piece.
I’m sure that many reading this post already include copywork in their homeschool lessons, but I thought I’d share a bit about how we do copywork in our family.
When we first began homeschool lessons, our copywork books were so very simple. My boys would write something like My name is David or Jesus is Lord. That was enough for them when they were just beginning to learn to write. Now though, we have lovely journals filled with poetry, lists, founding documents, Bible chapters, family mission statements, Our 21 Rules, Schedules etc.
I usually give them the assignment but sometimes they ask me “Mom, may I make a list of my favorite dogs” or “May I write up a list of my favorite baseball players?” For some folks this might be unacceptable, but I am fine with this. Their copywork journal will eventually be a memory book for them to read when they are grown.
