Handwriting Copywork Printables are Not Just for Practice

If you are concerned that your child does not have the best handwriting you may want to try something new to help them. Many homeschool families incorporate  handwriting copywork and copywork lessons into their daily homeschool routine with great success.

Copywork is an educational practice that involves copying a written text by hand. In copywork, students are given a short passage of text to copy word-for-word, either onto paper or into a notebook.

Famous educator Charlotte Mason used copy work and copywork books to help her children to learn better letter formation and help build fine motor skills. 

Ways to Use Copywork to Enhance Learning in Your Homeschool

For many, copywork is used primarily to help with letter formation, handwriting practice and building handwriting skills up. However, copywork selections can be used to enhance other areas of learning in your homeschool. They can be used as busy work if you need a quiet moment, and to supplement what you are learning.

Copywork is a great way to help your children with concentration skills. They have to focus on each letter writing it as neatly as they can paying close attention to proper spelling and punctuation placement. The final product will be beautiful handwriting that they can look back on with pride.

History 

You can use your history text as a passage for your daily copywork. Scientific research shows that when a child writes it forms neural connections and aids in memorization and learning. There are many important things that need to be memorized in history.

Using a passage from your history book will help your child memorize the historical facts and dates that they need to know. You can extend the lesson by providing a passage from a historical fiction book they are reading as well. Once completed, ask your child to relate that passage to your current history study. They can even take this a step further and write a report on what they just read.

Does your child have a favorite president or famous historical figures that they are fascinated with? You can do some research on that person and search for famous quotes that they have said. Have your child write the quote out in their best handwriting. Do they have a favorite quote from their favorite person in history? If so, they can copy that quote down with their best cursive writing.

You can include these copywork pages that they have completed in your history notebook and end of year portfolio. Your children may even want to decorate their pages or add drawings to them for a more personal touch.

Bible Memorization

You can use Bible verses and bible passages as copywork. Do your older children have meaningful passages that God has used to speak to their heart? They can use those or any favorite passages of scripture to copy. This can be a part of their daily quiet time or morning Bible time in your homeschool.

If your child has memory verses they are working on, the process of copywork will aid in memorization. For memorization, have your child use his memory verse daily until he can write it without having the written form in front of him. This is a great thing to do during morning time or family Bible time.

Are you working on memorizing the books of the Bible in your home? Print out the order of the books and have your children copy those down over the courses of a week. After continued practice, they will start to memorize them pretty quickly.

Do your children need to work on a particular character trait? Print out the character trait that you want to be the focus of the week. Hang it up in your school room or school area and have them copy it each day with a coordinating scripture.

Math

Copywork and math do not seem to go hand in hand on the surface. However, many homeschoolers are seeing how copywork is an effective tool for math understanding and memorization.

Younger kids can begin simply by writing and counting numbers or writing out simple sentences and word problems. Elementary students can use math facts as copywork. As they write them over and over you will be blown away by how quickly they begin to memorize them.

They can keep their basic math facts in a copywork notebook to reference as a cheat sheet as they are doing their daily math lessons. Using math facts as copywork could replace flash cards or computer math games completely.

Older students can use equations such as writing out the quadratic equation.  Consider using laws of math such as the Commutative Law of Addition for your copywork as well. 

Grammar

Grammar is rarely a favorite subject. However, you can use copywork passages to bring it to life and aid with developing language arts skills. Instruct your child to circle or underline parts of speech, capital letters, or punctuation marks.

It is not a good idea to provide a passage that needs to be edited.  Due to the strong connection between writing and memory, your child may inadvertently memorize something incorrectly. You may correct or edit a sentence or paragraph together and use the corrected version as copywork. If you use the edited passage have your child write parts of speech in different colors so grammar is the focus of the exercise.

Take some passages from great literature and use those as your copywork focus. If your child has a favorite book or book quote they can use a small section of their favorite book to copy into a copywork notebook.

Spelling and Vocabulary

Use your child’s spelling and vocabulary lists for copywork. Your child can either write his spelling word list out word by word. If they get overwhelmed with a large list you can add a few new words each day until the list is completely written out.

Try giving your children their spelling words and have them write out sentences using the spelling word within the sentence. The spelling word can be written in red or highlighted. Ensure your child is not using spelling words for copywork without seeing the correct spelling or until the child masters the spelling words completely. 

For vocabulary, your child can write the word and definition as copywork. Use one word a week to aid in memorization. You can also have your child copy a sentence that uses the vocabulary word. Have your child copy the word in red and the rest of the sentence using his regular pen or pencil. Once completed you can ask your child for the definition of the word.

Resources and Copywork Printables

Language Arts Printables and Copywork – There are so many themes and subjects to fulfill many interests of your children. There is a copywork sheet to excite any chil. 

The Wizard of Oz – Are you reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in your homeschool? Our free Wonderful Wizard of Oz copywork is great for middle and high school students and includes 20 quotes from the book to reinforce handwriting skills. 

Seasonal Poetry – Doing a seasonal poetry study is a great way to talk about the changing seasons and incorporate poetry into your homeschool studies. Our seasonal poetry copywork pack and unit study includes all 4 seasons and is geared towards middle and high school schoolers. There are 18 different poems with plain lines for copywork, for a total of 484 pages in each seasonal pack.

Shakespeare – Are you studying Shakespeare in your homeschool this year? This copywork packet includes a notebooking page and one single quote for copywork on twelve of Shakespeare’s most famous works. This pack covers Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, Henry V, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, and Romeo & Juliet.

Irish Poets – Learning about Ireland in your homeschool studies? Irish poetry is so much fun to study. This free printable pack includes 6 different poems, by 3 different Irish Poets and is geared towards older students. 

The Hobbit – Do you have Hobbit or Tolkien fans in your home? Our free cursive copywork pack includes 25 quotes in cursive, plus an extra lined page for longer quotes or practice. This is a great addition to a literature study for your middle schoolers.

The Wizard of Oz

Seasonal Poetry

Irish Poets

The Hobbit