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I know it might sound silly, but I never really gave much thought to the concepts my son was learning through copy-work. It has just been our handwriting portion of the day to copy the poems in Beyond. Well, today before school my son (6) was writing in a notebook for fun and when I peered over his shoulder, I saw this:

I have two of my own cats, they like to play, I like my cats.

COMMAS!! I have NEVER talked about commas, or why you need commas! He has just been copying them from his poetry copy-work! I asked him about the commas and he said; " Well, I just read the sentence out loud and it seemed like commas should go there." I know it's not perfect usage, but he USED them..and pretty well too! So, all this boasting just to say how pleased I am with the method of copy-work. I realize now that he is practicing a lot more than just handwriting and I am thrilled that he is using correct punctuation with a nary a word from me about it! Awesome!

That's fantastic!

It's wonderful to see them writing because they want to and remembering what they've learned.

Amey - What a great example of how copywork just flows naturally into writing! Thank you for sharing this. I love the CM concept of learning when "things look right" - your example shows your ds is getting that already.

In Christ,
Julie

Amey,

It's amazing to me too how much kiddos pick up about correct grammar, usage, punctuation, and spelling through copywork. When my kiddos see something done incorrectly on their standardized tests, it sticks out to them like a sore thumb because they are so used to seeing the correctly written model instead.

Thanks for sharing! We've become huge advocates of copywork too, for the very reason you mentioned. It's such a natural way to teach kiddos how to write well. k

When I taught public school, we had just the reverse happening. We drilled and drilled kiddos on finding the mistakes within a given passages, and then kiddos repeated those same mistakes in their own writing because it "looked right" to them.

Blessings,
Carrie