Homeschool Copywork ~ Review

Today I am sharing with you my thoughts on a product we've been using in our homeschool over the past weeks.

We received a Lifetime Membership to Homeschool Copywork which gives us access to a variety of e-books for copywork and notebooking pages such as the Vincent Van Gogh Copywork, Transportation Copywork and Town Mouse Country Mouse Copywork, along with many other varieties of copywork and notebooking pages.

What Is Homeschool Copywork

I think I really need to take one step back here just in case some of you aren't aware or have never even heard of copywork. So what is copywork exactly?

At face value copywork appears to simply be handwriting practice and in reality one can use copywork pages specifically for handwriting. It is so much nicer to copy out a lovely passage or a poem than fill in boring handwriting workbooks, after all!

But copywork is and can be so much more if you use it wisely. With copywork one can cover spelling, grammar, punctuation usage, comprehension and reading skills.

Plus as the guiding light in your children's lives you can also choose certain passages that you feel are appropriate for them and may offer them guidance and inspiration.

There is so much more to copywork than simply handwriting and if this concept is a new one to you I encourage you to read a little further on the topic of adding copywork into your homeschool. 

Now that you understand what copywork actually is, you're probably thinking, 'right, now I need to find certain passages to use for our copywork, that's just going to add a bunch more work to my overloaded schedule'. 

Wrong, this is where Homeschool Copywork comes into play. All of the sourcing and preparation has been done for you. Simply log into the membership area of the site and you have access to a myriad of copywork and notebooking pages, covering all manner of themes.

How We Used The Membership

Copywork has been on my list to add back in to our days, as it is something we let slide. Often I found myself reinventing the wheel when it came to providing the kids with copywork passages but with access to Homeschool Copywork I didn't need to do anything other than log in and find an appropriate piece to use with each of the children.

  As you know I have three children of very different ages and abilities so I needed to ensure I could meet those with our copywork. 

I was also quite eager to add in some Artist study that I had been working on. It seemed it was the perfect time to begin with our unit on Vincent Van Gogh. Homeschool Copywork has a total of five full volumes of van Gogh copywork pages, each containing a beautiful full colour image of one of his art works and the passage to copy. 

There are various line options and writing styles, making the book suitable for all ages.

I love that we can discuss the work of van Gogh right there on the copywork page, I don't need to go hunting for the art work images. Plus each of the passages is simply beautiful to read.

For some fun we've also been using the delightful Town Mouse Country Mouse book.

One thing that jumped out to me almost instantly was with my youngest and his need to write so small that it is nearly impossible to read. Of course I jumped straight onto the membership area of Homeschool Copywork and found the transportation pages.

These are very simple pages that work their way through the alphabet, but what I loved about them for my son is they gently forced him to slow down and to increase the size of his writing. He works on a few of these each week.

What We Didn't Like

My main issues with the membership area is there is no search function which I feel would be a very valuable asset in ease of finding what your looking for.

I would also love to see a preview option somehow built into the membership area as I needed to download the entire ebook to actually see what is inside. Granted each time I did a download we used the book anyway, but I still feel that this would be advantageous to have available.

We are secular homeschoolers and did find a large portion of the material to be religious in nature.

What I Do Like

Absolutely hands down the ease when it comes to finding passages is a winner for me and this is the exact reason why we have started and fallen off the copywork band wagon so many times over the years. Now that I have access to a range already prepared for me it will truly make it so simple to ensure we keep up with our copywork.

I mentioned earlier in regards to the membership area housing many religious themed copywork pages, however, there were more than enough secular books for me to choose from.

Some of which include, artists such as Monet, van Gogh, and da Vinci. Composers such as Bach and Mozart. There also topics such as the Wright Brothers, John James Aubudon, The Town Mouse and The Country Mouse, along with others.

Looking Ahead

Homeschool Copywork has most definitely become part of our regular routine now thanks to how easy it is having the download membership.

Pricing & Details

Visit the Homeschool Copywork website where you can find all the details and the different membership options available to you.

To see more from Homeschool Copywork visit them via your favourite social media outlet.

Facebook:  http://facebook.com/HomeschoolCopywork
Twitter: http://twitter.com/AmyBlevins 
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/hscopywork
Google+: http://plus.google.com/+AmyBlevins
Instagram: http://instagram.com/homeschoolencouragement

I hope you found this review helpful. If you would like to see further reviews of Homeschool Copywork from members of The Schoolhouse Review Crew, please visit this link.



Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

Come on over and join me at

Facebook ~ Pinterest ~ Instagram ~ Google + 


Have you looked at my Pinterest Boards lately?


Visit Our Worldwide Classroom's profile on Pinterest.  

The Truth About Sugar - FREE Notebooking Pages

The BBC documentary 'The Truth About Sugar' aired here the other night, hubby and I sat down to watch and I really felt it would be a good one for the kids and I to spend some time on. They are used to mum nagging about too much sugar so I figured hearing it from experts can never hurt in any way.

Their jaws were gaping hearing and seeing some of the information, especially the daily sugar intake of most people, against what the World Health Organisation recommends.

I whipped up a few different notebooking pages for them to be able to record some of what they took in from the documentary.

They really enjoyed working on these, especially my youngest. He has drawn bad sugary foods on the left showing a sick sad man with heart disease and on the right he has added fruit with a very happy healthy man. Love it!


If you missed seeing it on television you can view the documentary via you tube.

If you would like a copy of the "Truth About Sugar" notebooking pages please visit this link to download them.

I would really love to see how these are used by your kids so please be sure to let me know if you do use them.


Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

Come on over and join me at

Facebook ~ Pinterest ~ Instagram ~ Google + 

Looking for more Homeschool related activities?
Have a look at my Homeschooling Pinterest Boards.

Visit Kylie @ Our Worldwide Classroom's profile on Pinterest.  

My Australia Notebook

I've started pulling together an Australian Notebook for the kids to create in, add to and build on whenever we do something relating to this country of ours!

So basically along the same lines as their Animal Notebooks, these will be added to on a continual basis, and will grow into a notebook full of memories all about Australia.

For now I simply have the cover sheet and divider pages for our states. Various notebooking pages to go inside will hopefully happen some time soon. But I also know that we can begin on this today and so can you, just download, print and enjoy!

>>>> Download My Australia Notebook page dividers here.

>>>> Check my Australian Themed board over at Pinterest

This post is linked to:

Our Animal Kingdom Notebooks With Printable Materials

You may recall me mentioning that we've been working on an Animal Kingdom Notebook over the past few weeks. This is not being completed as one big giant unit. The plan is that we will add to it slowly, little by little, as we come across an animal that fascinates us or as it relates to other units of work we are doing.

For example when my youngest worked on activities for the picture book Caps For Sale, the older two chose a monkey each to research. We recently spent some time with Owls, so they have featured in the Animal Kingdom Notebook also.

Currently we are looking at Ocean Life and everyone is trying to decide which sea animals are 'notebook worthy'. After all there is such an abundance of sea life we can't possibly notebook all of them.

However, with our notebooks set up the way they are, in simple 2 ring binders, we can continue to add to these for years to come. Each child building their very own researched Animal Kingdom Reference binder. This gives each of them the freedom to add any animal they wish whenever they wish, along with anything we all do together.

I am really looking forward to watching this project grow and develop with the children.

I've kept it simple, the cover page above slides into the front clear cover of the 2 ring binder. Inside it is broken into two main categories, that of Vertebrates and Invertebrates.

These are the divider sheets for the Vertebrate section of the binder,

along with divider pages for the Invertebrate section.

Currently I have prepared two 'Animal Notebooking Pages', one with less detail for a younger child and the other covers classification and allows more space for research.

At some point I will probably need to add to these again as the children enter their high school years. I have been tossing around a simple way to do this with our preschooler also. If I do come up with something I'm happy with I'll be sure to share with you though.

If you'd like to begin an Animal Notebook Binder with your children you can download the full colour binder pages by clicking here.

You can also download the blank Animal Notebooking page by clicking here. The notebooking page for younger children can be found at this link.

If your children keep or begin an Animal Notebook I'd love to see it!

Linking this to:

Outdoor Hour: Fungi & Printable Note Book Pages

The Outdoor Hour challenge this month was Lichen, Moss & Fungi. With all of the rain we've had here this year we didn't even need to leave our yard to hunt down and discover an array of fungi.

Once we started looking I couldn't believe my eyes with all of the different varieties right here in our own back yard. The kids were pretty excited running here, there and everywhere looking for fungi. I could here shouts, "I've found a different one over here!"

I wanted a record of our time spent looking more closely at the fungi but didn't want to turn this into a chore, so I put together a very simple notebooking page for the kids to illustrate the fungi of their choice.

Everyone agreed on water colours for this exercise. Lego Lover (11) chose a single stand alone specimen.

From the Fairy Princess, 8.

Little Surfer Dude, 4.

We also completed a second page with the all of the photographs taken during the backyard fungi hunt.

After Fungi we were on a bit of a roll and notebooked some of our backyard flowers and birds. I'm sharing these simple notebook pages over at my box storage.

Download the note book pages by clicking here.

I'm linking this post up to the Outdoor hour Challenge over at Handbook of Nature Study.

M is for Monkey - Printable Notebooking Pages

I display our monkey related items on a shelf for easy access.

With our recent time spent on the story Caps For Sale I took the opportunity to extend the learning a little. Lego Lover 11, was far too old for the activities that went along with Caps For Sale. So he did some monkey research instead.

Animal Note Booking Page

Some time back I created Animal Notebooking pages, Lego Lover chose Gorillas to do some further research on. He used the books we had here on hand and then headed over to wikipedia and this great site was perfect.

Junior Animal Note Booking Page

When I first put these together last year some time I was concerned that the younger members of the household would be overwhelmed with some of the information and the level of writing required. So I put together a Junior version of the Animal Note Booking page.

This will be added to their Animal Kingdom notebooks, a classification project I've been working on for them.

The link to download these note booking pages is at the end of the post.

We collaged a colouring page found online.

Little Surfer Dude collaged a colouring page I found online. He wasn't as in to this as I thought he would've been though. I saw the idea over here.

We made an M is for Monkey.

He really enjoyed putting together this M is for Monkey though, he giggled his way through it and made certain he had plenty of hair!! The idea for this little guy came from over here.

Our Caps For Sale Row

To see what other monkey related goodies we got up to check out our Caps For Sale fun.

The blank note booking pages.

Download the Animal Note Booking Pages here.

Free Printable Australia Day Learning Packet

With Australia Day just around the corner I thought it was about time we did a little learning about places much closer to home.

January 26th commemorates the landing of the First Fleet into Sydney Cove in 1788.

This printable overview packet will be used by all of my children in varying ways, they are aged 10, 7 and 3.

The download includes some research questions which will assist in completing these notebook pages.

Printable songs to learn and have on hand during Australia Day festivities.

Colouring pages of the Australian Flag, Coat of Arms and Golden Wattle.

3 part Montessori style cards. I have also included a snippet of information for each card, so that in effect they are 4 part cards. These can used for vocabulary work and making small booklets with the information.

Copywork in both print and cursive.

Aussie Slang cards, use as a matching activity or for a game of snap.

Clip the beginning sounds, for early phonics practice.

Tracing pages for early handwriting practice.

Do a Dot Marker pages or laminate and use on a cookie tray with magnets, coloured smarties, pom poms or something similar.

 

The Australian Flag size sequencing activity.

A couple of picture books that your children may enjoy that would work well with an Australia Day Theme are:

Join Grace and her family as they hit the road camping, experiencing, and meeting all the people and places that make up Australia. (from Amazon)

Grandma Poss uses her best bush magic to make Hush invisible. But when Hush longs to be able to see herself again, the two possums must make their way across Australia to find the magic food that will make Hush visible once more. “Another treat from Mem Fox that is sure to be treasured. The whimsical illustrations are a wonderful complement.” (from Amazon)

Download the Australia Day Printables by clicking here.