Copywork using Charlotte Mason style

One of my favorite things – OK, I know I have waay too many favorites! – about CM schooling is copywork!  It’s one of the best, most relaxed parts of a CM education, yet it can seem such a mystery to many who are just learning about this style of educating their children. 

Copywork is exactly what it sounds like – your child will copy something each day into his notebook.  When they are younger, it will be shorter items – one sentence, one proverb, or one phrase.  As they mature into stronger writers, they will copy longer passages – poems, paragraphs, psalms, songs, etc.

So much is accomplished through this one little exercise!  They get handwriting practice, they pick up word usage, grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization, putting thoughts together coherently, they learn to pay careful attention to detail, they think deep thoughts!  WOW!  Can you believe so much can happen in just a few minutes a day!  It’s true! 

I know what your thinking – WAIT!  WHAT do they copy?!  Where do I get the material?!  Which pencil should they use?  Can they use a pen?  What’s the best paper?  HELP!

I will respond with my favorite answer – relax.  It’s really going to be OK.  You already have the best book ever – the Holy Scriptures.  You also know how to find great living books and use them for narration.  (If you missed that post, see it here.)  Your children likely already have a favorite poet or book of poems.  Now, they just need their favorite writing utensil, and a piece of paper!  (As for what they use – you are the teacher, which means YOU get to decide!  If you think it’s ok for a 7 year old to use a pen, then let them!)  For the paper, you can go as simple as one of those spiral bound notebooks on sale at your local store right now for about $.15, or as fancy as colored lined paper with pictures on it to decorate and put it in a page protector in a binder.

Now, pick up one of those great books you have, and find a passage that your student likes, or you like, or you want them to think about more, and have them start writing!  This is an important place to pick excellent works.  Miss Mason wanted children to be exposed to great works so they could begin to think great thoughts.  Stay away from silly poetry or songs or stories for your school time.  Those can be enjoyed outside of school time occasionally, but they should not be contemplated during this time.

You want to pick a passage that your student can complete in about 10 minutes of writing time.  This sounds short because, well, it IS!  It’s supposed to be!  Have you written for more than 10 minutes continuously lately?  If not, give it a try.  You’ll see how taxing this can be to someone just starting to write regularly.  You want to also make it short enough so they can copy it WELL in 10 minutes.  The way they are going to learn grammar, word usage, punctuation and all that other wonderful stuff is to do it correctly!  Keep in mind the saying – “Perfect practice makes perfect!”  They won’t learn it correctly unless they do it correctly.  For this reason, I usually have my grade-schoolers use a pencil for copywork – it’s much easier to fix a mistake!  For this reason, I also insist that they copy the passage EXACTLY as it is written.  I have them keep correcting until it looks like the passage they are copying.  If it takes longer than 15 minutes, we will put it away and come back to it tomorrow.

I know, that messes up my schedule of the five passages they were supposed to copy this week!  What is more important, that they “put out” lots of pages, or that they learn the correct way to punctuate a sentence?  If I’m more concerned with the volume of output than the quality of the work done, I have turned a wonderful tool into nothing but twaddle.  Miss Mason would be ashamed!

So, grab your bible, a piece of paper, and a pencil, and have your student copy your favorite verse!  You’ve just done copywork using Charlotte Mason style!

Comments

[Jimmie]

This post would be great for the Charlotte Mason blog carnival! You can submit it here.

[sarah in the woods]

Great post! I love copywork too.

[Sue]

Sarah,

Thank you so much for reading it. I'm glad you liked it! I hope it was an encouragement to you and all those who read it!

[{ jamie }]

We did this the past two years but haven't started it back up yet this year. Thanks for the reminder. :-)

[Sue]

You are welcome! Thanks for reading, and for commenting!