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Do you ask your student to complete this? Do you have your kiddo copy the entire poem each week? Does it depend on your child's age or writing endurance? Also, if you only require copying of part of the poem do you just put it in the notebook partially copied and call it good? Is it preferable to take two weeks and finish copying a poem in its entirety rather than copying portions of each poem? I could see doing that and ending up with half of the poems copied. If we do this then we'd still do the poetry box as written each week but only actually copy every other poem. Does that make sense? Hmmmmm. Just need some ideas and some affirmation here....

I am not sure about Bigger because we are on a break from Beyond for the rest of the summer...We just have a few weeks left....when we get back...but...in Beyond....my daughter who turned 8 in Feb....wrote each poem ...each week ...and we put it in a photo album...to keep...she loved looking back at how much her handwritting improved! We will do the same for Bigger probably...Copy the whole poem...in a weeks lesson...For her the copying has really improved her handwritting and she gained a real love for poetry thru it...Beth in Idaho

I am really nervous about this in Beyond (and I'm sure the poems in Bigger are longer than those in Beyond). I do see it as reinforcing their writing and helping them learn the poems really well. I am going to take it slowly and see how my DD does. Today was our first day and I made her copy one line (there are 12 lines in the poem). She let out a whoop after each word. So maybe it won't be as hard as I thought!

Unless the poem is unusually long, I have her copy the whole thing. It's not as much copywork as I thought it was when my first child did Bigger, .

I just finished Bigger with my ds who was not a strong writer at all since he was on the young side of the guide when we started. He had just turned 7. With all the writing requirements I had him wait to start copying the poetry till we got to unit 19.
We did Bigger at half pace (1 unit in 2 weeks at the start). When we started the poetry copywork in unit 19, I only had him do a few lines at a time so if the poem was short we did it all and for the long poems we sometimes only did two stanza's.
By the time we got to the end of Bigger, he was able to copy the whole poem.

So, with all that said, It is more important to have your dc grow into the skills required and have them down path by the end of the guide, than to overwhelm your child at the start. I believe the object is to do copywork from a good model, not to have the whole poem done if your dc is not ready for it. You will notice when they are ready to step up the activity level.

Bigger is a very meaty guide, but in our home we enjoyed it very much and my ds has grown into the skills rather nicely. Starting at half pace for us was a tremendous help to build up his skills

Success

We are using Beyond (my oldest is using the right side of Bigger as well). My youngest copies 1 line per day and my oldest copies 1 stanza per day...each writes what they can handle without getting too tired. My oldest has no problem finishing the poem each week, my youngest generally writes 1 stanza for each poem.

I think it is more important to have dc copying the entire Beyond poem by the end of Beyond than it is to have dc copying the entire poem in Bigger Hearts. The copywork in Beyond is important preparation for the increased writing skills required for Bigger Hearts. Bigger Hearts has enough writing within it to be a challenge, so the poetry copywork is good to do if dc need to be doing copywork to improve their writing or if dc are older and more copywork is desired. I also think it depends how a child is doing with the writing workload in Bigger Hearts. Wyatt, my oldest, copied every Bigger Hearts poem, Riley, my middle ds, copied half, and near the end of the year I let it be optional as his writing had improved greatly, so I knew he was ready for PHFHG.

If dc copy a portion of a Bigger Hearts poem, whatever they complete at the close of the week I'd call good enough. I think it's important to move on to the next poem, and give dc's entire attention over to that next poem, so that the poem dc are copying always matches the current week of plans they are doing. Wherever they are at in the poem, I'd just have them put ". . ." and write the name of person who wrote the poem at the bottom of it. If the copywork of the poetry is fatiguing dc so much that they are unable to give their due attention to completing the rest of the writing skills in the guide (i.e. vocab cards, R & S English 1/3 of answers, notebooking, etc.), then I would stop the poetry copywork or drop it to a line a day. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

We will be starting Bigger in just a few short days and we will begin by copying as much of the poem as ds can manage without getting frustrated (usually 4-8 lines of verse per day). Our goal, of course, will be to work our way up to him doing the entire poem.

Hi! In Beyond last year, we copied the whole poem each week. We are now in our second week of Bigger. As Julie has already mentioned, there is plenty of handwriting practice outside of the poetry copywork , so I let my daughter decide whether or not she wanted to copy the poems in Bigger. She naturally loves to copy books and poems anyway during the day from things that we have at home, and has very good handwriting. She decided not to copy the poems this year. She did decide, however, that she would like to do artwork each week for her poetry. So, on the 5th day, I plan to give her a photocopy of the poem and let her add the artwork around it. She is very excited about this! And, it made her feel important that I let her choose what to do with it . HTH!

Christy