Product Description

Beautiful thoughts for beautiful penmanship.

More than 200 years ago Letitia Anna Barbauld gave children a beautiful gift: Hymns in Prose for Children. First published in 1781, these hymns—written in prose, not in poetry form—encourage a love and reverence for God by drawing attention to His handiwork, His presence, and His protection. Now you can use these inspiring selections to also encourage good penmanship with Hymns in Prose copybooks.

Nourishes the mind while improving handwriting.—As your child carefully copies these beautiful hymns, he will contemplate great truths about God even as he develops the muscle memory needed for good penmanship.
Reinforces correct spelling and sentence structure.—Working with Mrs. Barbauld’s well-composed sentences will cultivate an excellent feel for good composition and a practiced eye for correct spelling.
Supports your choice of handwriting style.—Hymns in Prose copybooks are available in a variety of popular styles. Choose from print or cursive in either Zaner Bloser or D’Nealian style.
Gently guides beginning writers toward standard notebook paper line width.—The first selections in the book present the words in a more spacious format with larger letters, as is fitting for beginning writers. As your child progresses through the hymns, the letters grow gradually smaller and the lines closer together.
Reviews words learned in reading lessons.—The selected hymns correspond to the Hymns in Prose for Children reader and optional teacher book. If you are using those resources for reading lessons, these copybooks will provide additional opportunities to review words your child is learning.

Additional Information

Weight	.5 lbs
Dimensions	11 × 8.5 × 0.35 in
Author	Mrs. Barbauld
Writing Style	D’Nealian, Zaner Bloser
Print or Cursive	Print, Cursive
Pages	76
Binding	E-book, Stapled
Grade	Grade 2, Grade 3, Grade 1
Lesson Plan	Individual Studies, Grade 3
Charter-Friendly	No

9 reviews for Hymns in Prose Copybook

kristin – December 15, 2011
Do you have any copybooks available for Zaner Bloser cursive using three lined paper (I think it’s called primary paper) for those still new at cursive?
- Sonya Shafer – December 16, 2011
  ~~We do not currently have cursive copywork on three-lined paper.~~ Have you checked WorksheetWorks.com? They have a copywork generator that you can use. You type in whatever text you want and it’s supposed to give it back in the font you choose. The samples on the screen show the three-lined paper, so that might be a good resource for you.
  UPDATE: We now have cursive instruction available.
Addy – March 2, 2012
Can I just put a request in for some italics handwriting books in the future. It is such a beautiful style of handwriting and I believe it is the one that Charlotte Mason recommend.
- Sonya Shafer – March 3, 2012
  It seems like the D’Nealian has the slants and curves styling somewhat like the intent of italic. Is that not the case, or am I missing the obvious? I’d love to learn more about the differences between the two.
  - Yvette – March 4, 2012
    This looks wonderful, but the D’Nealian isn’t the same as Italics. It’s quite different, especially the cursive. I teach my children Italics, so I’d love to see this book in the Italic font. See a sample of italic handwriting compared with D’Nealian here (italic is listed as Getty-Dubay):
    http://www.cep.pdx.edu/samples/compare.pdf
holyoakhs – March 20, 2012
I am not sure how long ago the request for italics was posted, but thought I would mention Penny Gardner’s Italics Copywork book. I have used it with my children and they enjoyed it very much.
http://www.pennygardner.com/italics.html
shellyanglin – September 23, 2012
If we do this book everyday, 5 days a week, how long will this book last??? And are we suppose to copy the whole hymn in one sitting or is it broken up??
My dd age 10, still needs practice with her cursive handwriting and I thought this might be what we need. But, whatever I buy, I would like it to last a few months. We have your printing to cursive book and LOVE LOVE LOVE it. (and I’ve tried ALL the handwriting books out there…or at least it feels like it…)
Thank you,
Michelle
- Sonya Shafer – September 24, 2012
  I would not recommend copying an entire hymn in one sitting. Of course, it depends on the child, but it seems like about 1 page per day would be a good pace for the larger font in the front of the book. When you get to the smaller font presented in text blocks in the back of the book, one text block per day would probably work well. Since there are about 60 pages in the book, it should last several weeks.
  So glad you are enjoying Print to Cursive Proverbs!
Carrie – April 29, 2015
Hello. I am wondering how many hymns there are to copy from in this book or if you have a sample of the table of contents? Thank you.
- Jordan Smith – April 29, 2015
  Each copybook contains Hymns 1, 4, 5, 8, 10, and 11 from the Hymns in Prose for Children reader.
Rated 5 out of 5
Mbarck – August 7, 2015
I loved the selections from Mrs. Barbauld’s Hymns and my son liked them too, in fact he started writing his own poetry after reading these! For some reason we used this after Delightful Reading in about 2nd grade instead of the recommended order (which would have been the three A Child’s Copybook Readers first). I would strongly recommend following the proper order as the line space (height) gradually decreases and he just couldn’t write well with such small letters in the last two hymns in this book. Now as a 4th grader he probably could, though it still might be a little challenging. Thanks for making such lovely resources available.
Rated 5 out of 5
Kyla – September 12, 2017
I love this book. My son is finally not complaining about writing and his writing is neat. Thank you Simply Charlotte Mason! I would definitely recommend this book!
Rated 5 out of 5
Sarah – April 18, 2018
Brought for my 10 year old son and am very happy with it, thank you!
Rated 4 out of 5
Brooke – February 6, 2024
We’ve tried several cursive copywork and transcription books, and this is my favorite by far because I was able to choose the style best-suited to my own cursive writing. This may not seem like much, but if the children see my handwriting everyday and are confronted with something different in the text, I don’t want the argument of “but the book says…” from my children. The other big plus is the progression from larger to smaller print. Most books stay the same size throughout, leaving no room for progression. Finally, my only negative is thankfully a tiny one. It would be quite nice if the book used the dashed center line for at least the first portion of the book. My son is still struggling with proportion in his letters, and I’m finding I need to use a separate sheet of children’s writing paper for the exercise.
- Annietins – February 6, 2024
  Thank you for the wonderful review! We include the center line in the early books in our handwriting curriculum (A Child’s Copybook Reader and Print to Cursive), but it has been phased out intentionally in our Hymns in Prose copybooks, as this resource is designed to transition a child from copywork, or copying a letter at a time, to transcription, or copying a phrase at a time.