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Angel
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| Posted: April 26 2010 at 7:16pm | IP Logged
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I have a few questions about copywork, not just for young kids but older ones too.
How do you go about choosing copywork? What are your criteria for what makes "good copywork"?
Do you choose copywork ahead of time (for say, a quarter or semester or year) or do you do it on a weekly basis or some other way?
Do you always choose copywork from the books your children are reading or is that not a consideration?
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Angela
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Three Plus Two
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Mackfam
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| Posted: April 26 2010 at 7:35pm | IP Logged
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Angela wrote:
| How do you go about choosing copywork? What are your criteria for what makes "good copywork"? |
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It must be from worthy literature or poetry - something good, true, and beautiful. The Catechism and the Bible are my tried and true backups if I don't choose something from existing poetry or literature!!! If living books make up the bulk of your reading, your choices should be plentiful.
Angela wrote:
| Do you choose copywork ahead of time (for say, a quarter or semester or year) or do you do it on a weekly basis or some other way? |
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I choose weekly. Since you specifically asked about older children, I sometimes have my dd use her dictation selection as copywork. We discuss the dictation selection ahead of time, covering appropriate grammar and spelling and sentence construction. The copywork gives her a chance to write it as practice. I don't do this every week - just sometimes when she has a particularly challenging dictation selection for the week.
Angela wrote:
| Do you always choose copywork from the books your children are reading or is that not a consideration? |
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I like to do this, but I don't consider it a requirement, nor do I feel myself limited in this way. In general though, I usually pull from a piece of literature or poetry that is currently enjoyed.
We don't do copywork every day here. I do choose something every day to work on the Language Arts. We usually do a short quick lesson with Winston Grammar (quite abbreviated - 10 minutes max) at the beginning of our Language Arts time. Then, I took a lot of my cues from the suggestions in the Bravewriter program, The Writers Jungle. We do copywork twice a week, dictation twice (one day to study and discuss, one day for the dictation), and one day as creative writing. My younger writer enjoys free writes, my older writer will either write in her novel, work on writing and polishing/editing an essay, written narration, or biography. We focus on spelling through dictations. For help with dictation selections, and especially to focus on a particular spelling challenge, I really enjoy using Spelling Wisdom. The selections in these books are super great and make great copywork selections as well.
Oh dear. I realize you weren't asking about general language arts...and my post turned into...general language arts.  Hope there's enough copywork here to answer your questions, Angela!
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Jen Mackintosh
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SuzanneG
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| Posted: April 26 2010 at 8:15pm | IP Logged
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Angel wrote:
| How do you go about choosing copywork? What are your criteria for what makes "good copywork"? |
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Something worthy of being copied.  With a mixture of easy and challenging words. The right length for the age. Something beautiful.
Angel wrote:
| Do you choose copywork ahead of time (for say, a quarter or semester or year) or do you do it on a weekly basis or some other way? |
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Weekly basis. ALTHOUGH....if I know I'll need to be in survival mode at a certain time, I'd do it ahead of time, in various ways, depending on the age of the child.
Angel wrote:
| Do you always choose copywork from the books your children are reading or is that not a consideration? |
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Sometimes. Not always. It could be anything. A Poem. A Song. Prayers. A Catechism Question. Something from a map. Or something we talked about.
My oldest daughter who is wild-about-singing-and-choir likes to do her current choir songs for copywork. GREAT! Have at it! My other daughter likes to copy descriptions from field guides.
I've just switched into "survival mode" to a certain extent, and I've told my 9 & 7.5 year old that they are to do lines from their childhood prayer book which has beautiful rhyming prayers. And, enough to keep them busy for several weeks.
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Suzanne in ID
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Mackfam
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SuzanneG wrote:
| My oldest daughter who is wild-about-singing-and-choir likes to do her current choir songs for copywork. GREAT! Have at it! |
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Yes! Using hymns are great for copywork! Our copywork selections are as much tied to whatever current literature/poetry is being enjoyed as it is to the liturgical year or a pertinent study in religion. Quotes from the saints are wonderful! And, the use of prayers from prayer books for copywork is a great idea!!!! 
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Jen Mackintosh
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Becky Parker
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I plan my copywork on a weekly basis, but I'm working on doing my planning monthly, so that should change. There are so many copywork choices and it's sometimes difficult to pick which thing I want my children to copy!
We do copywork daily, because I use it for handwriting purposes. I usually type it out ahead of time and print it using a large font for my K'er and 3rd grader who struggles with copying or writing of any kind. Next year, I'm hoping to use StartWrite to type up and print out the copywork for my kids.
All three of my kids that are doing copy work copy the same thing, except in different sized bites. So my 5th gr. dd will copy a whole paragraph. My 3rd gr. ds will copy 1/2 the paragraph, and my K'er will only copy a sentence or even just a couple of words. I go for quality, not quantity.
As I mentioned above, I sometimes have a hard time deciding what the kids will copy. To remedy this, I have assigned a different resource to each day. On Mondays, the kids copy from the poem they are currently memorizing. On Tuesdays, I pull a passage from one of the books we are reading for literature. On Wednesdays it's the Gospel reading for Sunday's Mass, or a section of that reading. (I use Open Wednesdays for this.) On Thursday, they copy a quote from what ever saint we are reading about. Fridays are sort of our "copywork day off". But since we do our nature hiking, they still do some copywork because they will often copy something out of a field guide.
This has really worked well for us this year.
Something I have considered doing for next year is to create our own copywork booklet. I would work through the summer to find worthy pieces of copywork from the above categories, type them up using StartWrite, print them off, and bind them with a comb binder or something like that. Then, each child will have their own copywork book with poems, quotes from literature and quotes from the saints. It seems like a monumental task to me at this point, but how nice it would be to have that all ready to go for next year!
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Becky
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Angel
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Becky Parker wrote:
Something I have considered doing for next year is to create our own copywork booklet. I would work through the summer to find worthy pieces of copywork from the above categories, type them up using StartWrite, print them off, and bind them with a comb binder or something like that. Then, each child will have their own copywork book with poems, quotes from literature and quotes from the saints. It seems like a monumental task to me at this point, but how nice it would be to have that all ready to go for next year! |
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Yes, this is something I was thinking about, too. I found a yahoo group file of 100 different copywork selections all compiled into book form for Ambleside Online's Year 7, which would be terribly convenient for my oldest (we're using Year 7 as a spine right now, although since we've added so many historical topics it's going to take another year to get to the 1400's). But I'm not sure I like all the selections. So I was thinking that it would be easier on "future me", who will have to deal with a baby + moving to have a booklet compiled like that for my two oldest for next year. (My 7 yo I think I can handle on a weekly basis.) On the other hand... it seems like a lot of work for right now, and I'm not sure I have time.
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Angela
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Mackfam
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Becky Parker wrote:
| Something I have considered doing for next year is to create our own copywork booklet. |
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What an interesting idea! I'm going to consider how I might do that as well, Becky! Thank you for the idea!
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Jen Mackintosh
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SuzanneG
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Becky Parker wrote:
| Something I have considered doing for next year is to create our own copywork booklet. |
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I did this a couple years ago for my early-elem-girls, and the only thing that was annoying is that for the younger kids....their writing needs and capabilities change so quickly that if you do it too far in advance, then what you printed out in July----with dotted middle lines and 72 point font and tracing----isn't applicable in November. I had all these great pages READY for her, and she all of a sudden made huge strides in her writing, so she didn't need to TRACE, didn't want to write so BIG, and didn't want/need a middle dotted line. She was ready for "regular writing."
This wouldn't be the case for older kids....once they get to a point where it's just "copy it". But for the younger kids, StartWrite is so nice b/c you can adjust for the child's needs.....and if you do it too far ahead of time, it could all change so fast!
And, just listing some ready-made-copybooks here in case it's helpful:
:: Copywork books from Queens Homeschool
:: Memoria Press Copybooks
Does anyone else have any other ready-made-copywork-sources?
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Suzanne in ID
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Becky Parker
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Great point Suzanne! I was actually looking at the Memoria Press copy books for my ds who will be in 1st. I think making a book for the two older ones would be feasable, but you're right about the younger one possibly advancing beyond the book. That would be an aweful lot of work and time to put into something if it becomes too easy for him!
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Becky
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Angel
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I like the Memoria Press copybooks, actually. We used one when my dd was 1st grade age, and I recently ordered one for my 7 yo since he finished the 1st grade HWT book and wanted to move on to cursive... but I want him to continue to work on his printing as well. What I like about the Memoria Press books is that they have a nice big facing page for adding illustrations. So it's not just about the copying.
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Angela
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Donna Marie
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One thing that we started to do was to use the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary for copywork. The prayers and hymns are so beautiful and inspirational..especially moving into May!
I pray this daily and love coming to know them by heart..such a comfort! I would love for the kids to fall in love with them too!
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Donna Marie from NJ
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KC in TX
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I need to get back to doing copywork! I don't know why it dropped out of our school day.
Anyway, when we did copywork, I often used the daily collect from Catholic Culture.
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JennGM
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KC in TX wrote:
I need to get back to doing copywork! I don't know why it dropped out of our school day.
Anyway, when we did copywork, I often used the daily collect from Catholic Culture. |
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This is what I was going to suggest! Or the entrance antiphon (introit) for the day.
It will be wonderful when the new translation takes effect that the Collect prayers will be more meaty and match the Latin originals better. I'm praying and hoping.
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lapazfarm
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I have started back into copywork for my younger kids again after dropping it for awhile. My dd responds to it particularly well.
Most of the time I tend to use passages related to whatever nature study we are doing and I try to switch up between poetry and prose. Comstocks is always good for a verse or good prose.
Right now dd is working on the poem O' Dandelion to coincide with our dandelion studies. She just does a couple of lines a day. My grandson (Kinder)just gets a very short sentence to work on (eg. "The dandelion is yellow".)
Sometimes I choose a passage from our read-aloud or another topic dd is interested in. I rarely choose ahead of time and prefer to remain flexible so that I'll be sure to pick something that pleases dd.
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Theresa
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Angel
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Thanks for all the input! 
I have to admit that I feel a bit stuck with my older kids. It's not so hard to choose things for my 7 yo to copy week-to-week, but for my older kids with more complicated passages... they like to be independent and not have to wait on me, especially for required subjects. But life is such that I am often scrambling to keep up. While there are decent sources of premade books for younger kids, there seems to be nearly nothing out there for older kids.
What I have always wanted my kids to do as they get older is to keep a commonplace book, in which they copy out passages (on their own!) from their reading that have particular meaning for them, or seem important to their studies. But my oldest has just become not allergic to holding a pencil in about the last year. My hopeful nudges and suggestions have to this point fallen on deaf ears.
Is there a giant difference between a commonplace book and required copywork? Any of you with older kids do both, or just one or the other?
Maybe I should jump threads and start asking about commonplace books, too. Hmmm.
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Angela
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Becky Parker
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Hi Angela,
I love the idea of a commonplace book and next year, we'll start the year off with new notebooks, really nice ones. I will explain to the kids that this is their commonplace book, and I expect them to do their nicest work in it. BUT, I'm afraid it wont reallybe a commonplace book because I'm pretty sure i'll be the one picking the copywork. I've tried to encourage my kids to do this on their own, but it never seems to work. They just look at me like "so we're supposed to copy what someone else has already written and enjoy doing it?" I've shown them my own notebooks, full of quotes from things I've read, talked to them about what a lovely finished product they will have, etc. But to no avail. So, I think, for now, I will have to assign it.
One possibility that I just thought of though, is to assign the copywork and then say, "Now, if you have a passage that you like from a book you are reading and would rather copy that instead - great!" It might encourage them to be looking for interesting passages as they read.
This might be a little difficult if you plan the copywork for teaching language arts. For us, it is mostly for the purpose of handwriting and then I pull out certain things I want the kids to notice, like the use of quotes, but I don't use it as our primary language arts teaching tool.
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Becky
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SuzanneG
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Linking Commonplace Book for future reference and for those who aren't familiar with it.
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Suzanne in ID
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lapazfarm
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Angel wrote:
It's not so hard to choose things for my 7 yo to copy week-to-week, but for my older kids with more complicated passages... they like to be independent and not have to wait on me, especially for required subjects. But life is such that I am often scrambling to keep up. While there are decent sources of premade books for younger kids, there seems to be nearly nothing out there for older kids.
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Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the book "The Harp and Laurel Wreath" include passages for older students as well as younger? I used to have that book, but it's been ages ago so I may be misremembering. If it does have good passages for older kids, it might be one option to use when you haven't got the time to pick something from their current reading.
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Theresa
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Angel
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lapazfarm wrote:
Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the book "The Harp and Laurel Wreath" include passages for older students as well as younger? I used to have that book, but it's been ages ago so I may be misremembering. |
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Hmmm... I think you might be right. I just pulled the book upstairs out of my basement to see about poetry for the little boys (which was what I used to use it for, back when my big kids were littler kids). Maybe I should actually take it off the stack on my night stand now??? 
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Angela
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ekbell
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When I look back, I didn't see the purpose of copying material down for myself until I was in highschool (when I started carrying around a minibinder for such notes).
I think that's when I realized
a)I might have problems finding certain quotes again and
b)I'd be leaving home and my parents books and the local library and...I want to keep certain bits!
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Topic: copywork questions
