>>Can you explain a little bit about the “copy work” you mention?<<

Copywork is a method espoused by Charlotte Mason.  Being an eclectic homeschooler, I don’t limit myself to approaches or techniques from just one method – I adopt ideas that resonate with me.  When I read about Charlotte Mason’s work, I connected with several things she wrote about.  One was the focus on quality literature; another was the idea of copywork. 

Copywork is exactly what it sounds like – you have your child copy written passages.  My kids begin copywork as soon as they finish a basic workbook on handwriting, so that they are familiar with how to form the letters properly, at about the age of 6 or 7, depending on the child.  My six year old now isn’t doing it; I don’t feel it would be constructive for him yet.  It’s important that whatever they copy be quality writing samples; though the copywork serves as handwriting practice, it also serves as so much more.  They continue doing copywork on a daily basis until they are ten, at which point I transition them to developing their independent writing skills.

By providing your child with a good model of writing, over time he will develop a sense of good sentence structure, grammar, and spelling.  I don’t make grammar or spelling an independent subject – I know that they’re internalizing these things when they do their reading and copywork.  How much they do is much less important that the quality of the work they do.  When they do their copywork, it has to be exact – every punctuation mark copied properly, every word spelled correctly, written neatly.  If it’s sloppy then they have to do it over (that has rarely happened).  Part of the goal in doing the copywork is to help a child focus on the details; too often kids gloss over small details in their rush to get their work done.  Before they show it to me, I tell them to look at it and compare it to the original, to be sure there are no mistakes.  They often see things on their own that need to be corrected, and finding your own errors is more valuable than having someone else point them out to you.  Their copywork should be something that they can take pride in showing someone. 

I’ve used different things for them to copy from over the years.  It can be any book that you feel is well written and appropriate for the child’s age.  Initially, I used A Child’s Garden of Verses, by RL Stevenson.  That was good but then I felt that copying poems wasn’t as helpful in developing a sense of regular sentence structure as a book would be.  I started my dd8 (then 7) on the first book in the Billy and Blaze series, and now she’s using a McGuffey reader, as is my ds10 (they use different levels – McGuffey readers begin with a primer and go up to level 6 – I start the copywork with the first reader, which comes after the primer).  I plan to use the McGuffey readers for copywork for all of my kids from now on, with the exception of when they are new to copywork – to start them off, I’d give them something more engaging if I felt it would be helpful to them.

Avivah