Copywork is exactly what it sounds like... copying! Each day your child may spend a few minutes copying great pieces of work from a wide variety of sources – pieces of literature, poetry, scripture, fables, quotes, mottos and so on. Copywork goes along well with notebooking, so it's nice to find passages that will work well with your study. While your child is copying great works, emphasize the importance of using their very best penmanship and making their copy as close to the original as possible. By using this method, your child will see the proper way to punctuate, usage of different parts of speech, as well as capitalization. Primarily, they will see how a great piece literature should look and be written.
Copywork will allow your child to see different writing styles and structure, which in turn, if consistent, will help them become better writers. If your child can manage it, have them look and write an entire word instead of letter by letter, this will assist them in becoming better spellers. My younger children who started out doing copywork from the start were better writers and spellers at a younger age than my older children were. They didn't seem to have to work as hard at spelling. While my older children, who began copywork later, struggled a bit more. That’s not to say copywork was a for sure cure for spelling, however, I do believe it helped a lot.
If your child is very young, you can start with the formation of their letters. Have him spend only as much time he can manage doing this. Once this is mastered you will move on to words, sentences, paragraphs, poems, scripture, quotes... I think you get the point.
Some children enjoy illustrating their pages, however, this should not be something forced upon them, but gently encouraged. Many of the
copywork notebooking pages I offer have illustrations while others provide boxes for your child to create their own illustration or find a something that relates that they can glue onto their page, while others offer nothing except lines for copying or narration.
Over the years, I've done different things to get my kids motivated to do their copywork - I used to keep separate jars with scripture verses, quotes, and poems in them. Whatever they pulled out that day, that was their copywork for the day. I also used to keep a shelve in our schoolroom with books of poetry and fables. We used to alternate days copying verses, quotes, poems, passages from literature, and their choice for each day of the week. However, some selections take more than one day to complete. Therefore, if your child is young don't expect more than they can handle in about 5-10 minutes, depending on your child.
In short, if you choose to use copywork during your school routine, you will find that your child will become better at spelling, writing, grammar, penmanship, as well as, retention. Copywork is so simple to implement, there really is no reason not to give it a try.
Copywork Notebooks Available from Notebooking Nook
