Copywork vs Handwriting

It is the same thing in my house. The copywork is not just copying good literature – the purpose of our copywork is to refine their handwriting – taking care to make sure that they are continuing to form their letters correctly so that in time the beautiful handwriting is a habit. The good literature just helps plant great ideas and helps the chore of learning to write not be so dreary…

For my 7th grader, we stopped doing daily copywork per se. She has learned to write well enough every time she writes that it is not necessary. To keep her mindful and careful, I have her select a passage from her reading – free read, literature, poetry, science, history, scriptures, whatever – that she copies into her Book of Mottoes once a week (unless she chooses to do it more often). Her Spelling Wisdom is not done with handwriting in mind now, it is practiced and written so she can learn the new words – sometimes she doesn’t need to write the whole thing. She does written narrations from different subjects everyday – but only 1 subject per day for now as she continues to get the hang of it. (We started CM methods later with my two oldest).

My sixth grader does use her Spelling Wisdom passage for all three – handwriting, copywork and dictation. She is not ready for written narrations quite yet.

So, imo, your son’s copywork IS handwriting and should be scheduled as such – definitely kill both of those birds at once. 😉 And keep the time for this short!