Charlotte Mason Basics: Copywork Resources

Photo courtesy of fortinbras

Last week we looked at copywork, the whys and the hows of including it in the modern homeschool. This week, I hope to inspire you with a few resources that you may find helpful in assigning copywork for your children.

The number one living book, of course, is the Bible. I often have our children select passages that we are currently studying and I like to vary the translation used. A particular favourite for copywork is the King James version. We use this version occasionally to read from, but I enjoy it a lot for copywork. The language is rich and beautiful. Most of the Bibles in our home are not King James, so I find it much more convenient to obtain a passage online. I really like this site for finding Bible passages. It is simple to search for various translations and it is a snap to paste selections into Word, change them into a suitable font and print them out for a child to copy.

Another fabulous online resource for copywork is the Ambleside Online copywork yahoo group. A huge number of the books Ambleside suggests for reading have selections chosen specifically for copywork purposes. The file section contains a wealth of great passages from a large number of common books. Whether you are using Ambleside Online or not, this group is terrific since it has copywork selections from books your child has probably read and enjoyed.

As for print resources, our children enjoy using The Harp and Laurel Wreath: Poetry and Dictation for the Classical Curriculum by Laura M. Berquist. This is a well-known book in homeschool circles, which can be used for a variety of things besides copywork. We have also made use of it for recitation and, as the sub-title suggests, for dictation. Another big favourite around our home is Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Our children love to find quotes from famous people whose lives they have studied. (They particularly love the obscure quotes!) A searchable, online version can be found here.

Poetry is probably my children's favourite thing to copy. We make use of many different poetry books, but the one we come back to again and again is Favorite Poems Old and New compiled by Helen Farris. It contains hundreds of poems, listed by topic, which I find very helpful. The arrangement makes it fantastic for finding poetry to add to a nature notebook, or for finding a poem on a particular topic of interest for a child to copy. It is a great resource which we have enjoyed for years.

Do you have other favourite online or print resources you like to use for copywork? I'd love to have your ideas included. Just add a comment in the comments section.

Next week, Charlotte Mason Basics will continue as we look at the topic of Living Books. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. :)