Today I’d like to introduce you to Homeschool Copywork.  We are thankful that we were able to review and continue to use their Lifetime Membership. But first – an story of why we need it:

“Forward the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldiers knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and Die:
Rode the six hundred.
       Charge of the Light Brigade
          by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I have had several teens over the past few weeks while Jon is working on his copywork. “What is he doing?” they will ask. “Writing out poems by Tennyson,” I reply. Each time, I get a blank look, maybe a “Who?”, and a curiosity question. I’ll read this part of the poem, and then another. “I’ve never heard of him”, comes the reply.  Sad.

As we get into High School – the pull to conform to teach information in similar way as the public high school is strong. Homeschoolers, like myself, who started out maybe with Unschooling, or relaxed Charlotte Mason pick up steam in the 4th – 7th grades exploring art, literature, poetry, science, and math – using living books. And then 8th grade comes around, and we all of a sudden are blinded by (cue music) Dun Dun Dun – High School.

High School Level has a way of changing your goals and methods. We research subjects and courses and try to make sure we are aligned for graduation and college.  We start to look for resource that validate our grades given. It is too easy to be persuaded to trade a Charlotte Mason way of learning and set up your day to be ‘school at home’ instead.

That is why I am excited when companies like Homeschool Copywork are presented. They know that copywork will improve grammar and improve minds. They may even know that I have an adventure loving boy who would rather be in the woods than read about a poet who wrote about it. Best case scenario, we would be performing copywork from our learning resources. But that just isn’t feasible all of the time. 

Click on Copywork, by Homeschool Copywork to read some great inspiring quotes on the Why.

So as I went to the site – it was easy to see the resources listed by learning level. I focused on the Junior High – High School Copywork. However, I did look a few of the younger titles. The main difference is how the work is laid out on the notebooking page.

The upper level has two sets of copywriting pages that also include a cursive set. A few of the selections –

• Looking Upward: Quotes by Charlotte Bronte as Copywork
• Claude Monet Artist Study and Copywork
• 1 Corinthians 13 Cursive Copywork
• Winds of Play: Quotes from Elizabeth Barrett Browning for Copywork
• Courage Always Rises – Quotes from Jane Austen for Copywork
• The Poems of Emily Dickinson as Copywork
• The Poems of Lewis Carroll
• Dragons of the Bible Copywork, Notebooking, and Coloring Pages
• Character Building Copywork
• Star Spangled Banner
• Rainbow Copywork-Final
• Charge of the Light Brigade and Other Tennyson Poems as Copywork
• Vincent van Gogh Artist Study and Copywork Volume 1 – 5
• Leonardo da Vinci Artist Study and Copywork
• Franz Liszt Quotes for Copywork
• Aaron Copland Copywork
• Beethoven – Quotes from Composers
• J.S. Bach Quotes from Composers Copywork
• Duke Ellington Quotes for Copywork
• Wilbur and Orville Wright Copywork
• Armor of God

If you have been following us this year, you’ll know that we are focusing on US History for 9th grade. There are quite a few selections above that have helped. We focused on Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the  William H. Taft Inaugural Address Copywork projects.

We had access to the Lifetime Membership – and I looked through all of the titles to pick two for this review. Once you are logged in, one click on a title will downloads a PDF file to my computer. I didn’t have to hassle with zipped files.  I also downloaded the Armor of God PDF, and looked at a few of the Artist and Hymn selections to do next.

I looked through the packet. Tennyson has three poems and a couple of different ways to print. I chose the plain handwriting sample. The pages resemble notebook pages. It is simple and uncluttered. Enough words for a very quick copywork time and a photo or two. 

Jon worked on one page a day focusing on spelling and punctuation. We made mention to keep the lines exact, as it makes it easier to read back.

Each day I read over the text to see if I thought there might be words that were unfamiliar and would ask him to bring the text to create pictures for me verbally. On one day we had to look up Sabres Bare, Gunners, and Battery-smoke. They were depicted in the images on the copywork pages, but we looked them up in the dictionary and Google images to get a better visual.

I would have him read the text, and he read it rather dry and quickly. Then I’d read the text as if giving an oral presentation to a crowd. It helped to liven him up and I almost jabbed his shoulder with my pencil sabre and he humored me by laughing.

It is hard to find great pieces to write. I was just at the ball fields with a homeschool friend of a high schooler and she mentioned the ease of copywork as well. I am thankful to Amy Blevins for putting these pages together!

Keep up with new pages and copywork ideas on social media:

Facebook: http://facebook.com/HomeschoolCopywork
Twitter: http://twitter.com/AmyBlevins  @AmyBlevins
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/hscopywork
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