We loosely do a Charlotte Mason-style of education. (I say loosely because, though we do most of our learning with living books and do art study, nature study, narration, and copywork, I'm not a purist.) Charlotte recommended that copywork begin with learning the proper way to
write letters and naturally progress into short sentences.
I've found copywork to be tedious for my littler ones. When we used Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, we always skipped the writing activity at the end of the lesson because my kids were not ready to begin writing at the same time they were ready to begin reading.
When they were ready to write, they usually began on their own to write their name or other words on the pictures they were coloring. One of our favorite resources was the ABC Preschool series by Rod and Staff which is actually on a kindergarten level. Each of these fun workbooks gave practice in coloring neatly, writing letters, tracing lines, and writing the child's name.
We didn't begin formal copywork until Gavin was in second grade (age 6-7) and we didn't do it on a regular basis until he was in third grade (age 7-8). We have used the copybooks by Memoria Press. On each page, the child writes a scripture or poem (length depends on the level of the book) and draws a picture to accompany it. We have also used A Reason For Handwriting which is similar, but is also more colorful and probably more kid-friendly. Now we simply use a copywork folder.
Each child is different, but if your child is bored with writing the alphabet and ready to move on to copywork, seize the opportunity to find something she will love to engage her mind in!
I've found copywork to be tedious for my littler ones. When we used Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, we always skipped the writing activity at the end of the lesson because my kids were not ready to begin writing at the same time they were ready to begin reading.
When they were ready to write, they usually began on their own to write their name or other words on the pictures they were coloring. One of our favorite resources was the ABC Preschool series by Rod and Staff which is actually on a kindergarten level. Each of these fun workbooks gave practice in coloring neatly, writing letters, tracing lines, and writing the child's name.
We didn't begin formal copywork until Gavin was in second grade (age 6-7) and we didn't do it on a regular basis until he was in third grade (age 7-8). We have used the copybooks by Memoria Press. On each page, the child writes a scripture or poem (length depends on the level of the book) and draws a picture to accompany it. We have also used A Reason For Handwriting which is similar, but is also more colorful and probably more kid-friendly. Now we simply use a copywork folder.
Each child is different, but if your child is bored with writing the alphabet and ready to move on to copywork, seize the opportunity to find something she will love to engage her mind in!
We also use Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and I ALWAYS skip the writing portion. We use A Reason for Handwriting too but not all the time. I took a very laid back approach to copy work this year. Erin found it to be SO boring and I couldn't really blame her. We just did more "fun" writing and that seemed to do the trick, i.e. letters, birthday cards, notes, etc.
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