When a homeschool social media account asks about requiring cursive for one’s homeschooled students, there is often a great debate in the comments. Homeschool parents and others have strong and diverse feelings about cursive. And copywork too! The wonderful thing about homeschooling is that we can choose what works best for our families when it comes to cursive and copywork. And there are so many great choices available.
How Are Cursive and Copywork Connected?
When learning a new skill like handwriting, practice does make perfect. Whether your child is learning print or cursive, he or she will need to practice those letters, words, and sentences to ensure they can form the shapes properly and with ease. For many, this is where copywork comes into play.
What is copywork? Demme Learning defines copywork as “a learning practice where you learn skills by copying a selected passage by hand.” You can use copywork in a variety of homeschool lessons including science, Scripture memorization, and more. The options are really endless.
If you are incorporating cursive into your homeschool lessons, copywork will help your children learn facts, quotes, and more as they practice their cursive. They will practice their spelling, recognize grammar and punctuation, and start to put into long-term memory everything they are writing in cursive.
How Can You Incorporate Cursive and Copywork Into Your Homeschool Lessons?
What are your goals for adding cursive into your homeschool lessons? Do you want your children to learn a new penmanship skill? Are you hoping to improve their handwriting? Maybe your child is artistic and wants to find another way to be creative.
There are many great options if you wish to teach your children cursive or help them hone those skills. If you want to help your children with their math skills as well as their cursive, Page A Day Math is one option for elementary-aged children. Page A Day Math helps children work on their math facts while practicing their penmanship as they fill out the fun math workbooks. They also have a variety of books that focus on cursive using spelling lists, biology words, the names of scenic places, and more.
Another option for elementary-aged children are the New American Cursive workbooks from Memoria Press. Mr. Meerkat guides children through a variety of tasks, which include step-by-step instruction on how to draw each letter. And while the books are designed for grammar students in the Classical Christian Education stage, older children could also benefit from the books that contain famous quotes and Scripture.
And for those teens or adults who wish to practice cursive? CursiveLogic offers The Art of Cursive, which quickly teaches the lowercase alphabet and then jumps into 27 images to color. So while this book isn’t a curriculum for teaching cursive, it does allow older children and adults to practice those skills in a unique way.
What about copywork? Why do you want to add copywork into your homeschool day? Are you looking to help your children with penmanship, memorization, spelling, or something more? There are so many benefits to using copywork. It can help build vocabulary, improve spelling, and introduce different grammar mechanics in a gentle way. You can introduce new authors, individuals, and Scripture to your children through copywork.
Members of SchoolhouseTeachers.com have access to Everyday Copywork, which provides over 175 passages in both print and cursive for your entire family. Passages include Bible quotes (KJV), information about historical events, holidays, mathematics, science, and geography. Children can also be assigned copywork that includes excerpts from famous speeches and works of literature. There is a great variety of copywork to include in your homeschool lessons.
Sharing Thoughts
The next time someone asks your opinion on cursive and copywork, how will you answer? Have you found a new way to incorporate cursive or copywork, or both, into your homeschool lessons?
Connect with the Hey, Mama! Homeschool Show at HomeschoolShow.com to hear more about cursive and copywork.
HomeschoolingFinds.com Author
This article has been written by Kristen Heider. She is the Business Building Team Manager of The Old Schoolhouse® and the Social Media Manager of HomeschoolingFinds.com. She shares more about her family’s homeschooling journey at A Mom’s Quest Teach.