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I may have asked this in the past but can't find it....

When your child copies the poem how are you handling this? Do you photocopy the poems and give them a "poetry key"? Do they read out of the guide each day? On what is the child copying? A composition book? Loose paper? I need some ideas to keep this set up simple so that we can get to the copywork part each and every day. THANKS! In the meantime, I'll keep poking around in the archives. I have some memory of asking about this a few months ago.

I generally either have her copy out of the book (she does mark off the lines she has already done so she can find her place, and that helps her with a feeling of accomplishment to see how much she's done), or I write just the lines she is copying that day on my white board for her to copy. I know some people do photocopy it, and put it in the child's notebook or have the child do their illustration on the photocopy. My DD doesn't like copying out of the book as well, but she can do it.

For my 1st grader, I write parts of the poem on paper for him to copy right underneath. Sometime this school year I will transition him to just copying out of the guide.

When my 3rd and 4th graders do copywork, they just use the guide and copy onto loose paper that can go into their binders. (Unless they are copying something for the Commonplace book).

Grace has the advantage of having an older sister... I'm going to have a composition book for her and she will copy straight out of the guide for Beyond and Bigger for her to have her own "commonplace book" She is very excited about getting to use the guide herself

We used a Mead journal (one of those black and white composition ones). This worked really well, as it kept the poems all intact, rather than having loose papers around. Another plus is that my ds still will frequently thumb through his book and read the poems. As he reviews his work, I can sense he has a feeling of satisfaction of a "laborious" job well done. Most of the time, I just handed my son the HOD manual, opened to the appropriate page, and had him copy it out of there. I found it very beneficial to have my ds copy directly out of the book, as that is a skill that he will use throughout his education.

When my son did copy work in Beyond last year, he would copy directly from the guide. I didn't photocopy aanything. I had him write on handwriting paper, I don't think he was ready for notebook paper yet.

For Bigger Hearts I found a poetry book online to print out from the yahoo group. My daughter uses that for her poetry reading and copywork while I use the manual.

I change it a bit as they get older. To start with, we use loose copywork paper (with 1/2" lines). I copy the poem and leave a line between for them to copy it below me...that way they can focus on writing their letters correctly and not trying to figure out what to write. Then they move onto copying on the same paper, but directly from the book. Finally, my oldest is using wide-ruled paper and copying from the book. I did type out the poems and print off a copy for each, but it's so much easier to just hand them the book.

My pages are in page protectors, so I pull that week's poem and slip it in his poetry notebook. I use a sticky note (thanks to Julie) under the line for him to copy. Now that he's copying more than one line a day, I have a sticky note under the place for him to stop and he moves the one down under each line. The sticky note has worked wonderfully to help him keep his place, and having the single page allows him to have it right above his notebook with everything tilted like it should be. We use a HWT notebook since we had it and he's used to the HWT lines. If we hadn't already had it I would have used a regular, narrow lined composition notebook. (I'll never use spiral again!)