Before we began our homeschooling journey in 2003, I worked in a private Christian school where my three children attended. I taught high school there for three years, with my oldest son as one of my students. Then, because of the school’s need for an elementary school teacher, I moved to the 2nd through 6th grade learning center where my younger son was among my pupils. Throughout my experience as a teacher, I noticed so many things that I found lacking in the system and the teaching process in which I was participating. I had heard about homeschooling and my mother had encouraged me to try it, but I feared that I would not know where to begin. Several events led up to my husband and me removing our oldest son from the school and finishing his senior year homeschooling. I continued to work at the school until the end of the year, schooling my eldest in the evenings. After much prayer and discussion, my husband and I decided that I would not return to work the following year and that we would bring our younger two children home to continue their education.
At first I fell into the trap of trying to imitate a formal school setting, which made no sense because I knew from experience that method was sorely lacking. As time progressed, I discovered new ways to both motivate and encourage my children’s education. I became more aware of how my children learned best and I tried various curricula until we discovered the things that worked for us. We had a very eclectic homeschool and used various sources of learning.
When I first heard about copywork, I didn’t understand how copying someone else’s work could teach my children. Much to my delight, I quickly realized the multi-faceted benefits of copywork and I incorporated it throughout our subjects. Copywork not only gives the student handwriting practice, but, through imitation, it allows them to get a feel and a better understanding of what the author is saying. It aids in the learning of facts or the memorization of passages. I include small boxes to use for student illustrations of the quotations or “Fast Facts” boxes to be filled in with other relevant information pertaining to the topic. Both help reinforce and expand the understanding of the quotation. I chose to create pages with guidelines to promote proper letter formation and to help my children to discipline themselves to write correctly and neatly. I have seen great improvement in their composition and creative writing assignments. I recognize their efforts in imitating writing styles and I see them growing with each Scripture passage they commit to memory. They gather all their copywork pages into notebooks, along with various note booking pages I’ve created for them to use, and they have a wonderful keepsake as well as a reference resource they can use for years.
My Journal Writing Prompts Calendar book provides creative writing ideas for every day of the year in easy to use calendar format along with fun journal writing notebook pages.
As we traveled along the road of home education, even though it was not always a smooth path, we continued to discover new and wonderful things that we may have otherwise missed. We are eternally grateful to the Lord’s direction and we desire to share our passion and love for homeschooling with others.
From left to right: Middle son-2012 Graduate, Daughter-2015 Graduate, Oldest son-2003 Graduate