Tea Time with Annie Kate Rotating Header Image

Review: Copywork Lessons for Future Heroes

This summer I wanted Miss 12 to keep up with her hard-won cursive writing skills and fill her mind with inspiring thoughts. Then I was offered Copywork for Future Heroes to review, and it works perfectly.

Copywork for Future Heroes is an ebook containing 150 days of quotations from the Bible and famous people such as Benjamin Franklin, John Wesley, Socrates, Kipling, Aesop, Shakespeare, Einstein and more. The student is supposed to copy out one selection a day, but I ask Miss 12 to do two day’s work since she old enough to go a bit more quickly.

The contents of the ebook are in a simple font, with g’s and a’s looking as the students have learned them, so that younger students can simply copy it exactly.  Older children who are familiar with letter formation in cursive can translate the print letters to cursive as they copy them, a very worthwhile exercise in itself.

Students copy the quotations into a separate scribbler; there is no space for them to do so under the quotations.  While this may be a problem for very young children, it’s wonderful for everyone else, because one print-out of the ebook will do for the entire family and the resulting student notebook is uniquely the child’s own.

And of course, there are all the usual benefits of copywork:  spelling, grammar, and punctuation practice from well-written examples.

Because of the value of the quotations, it would benefit a student to go through this book twice, first printing all the quotations and, a few years later, writing them in cursive.

Here are a few examples of the thoughts your child will copy down:

  • My son, if sinners entice you do not give in to them. Proverbs 1:10
  • Whatever you are, be a good one. Abraham Lincoln
  • Be yourself, everyone else is already taken. Oscar Wilde
  • We often miss an opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work. Thomas Edison

This copywork ebook also includes several longer selections from the Bible, Aesop, Kipling, and others. In the longer passages, each day’s assignment is clearly marked with an asterisk so that the daily work is never overwhelming.

This book is aimed specifically at boys, but I am using it successfully with my tomboy.  After all, she’s been using Presidential Penmanship and she reads Henty’s novels, both of which have a masculine outlook but are meant for both boys and girls.  This ebook is similar. Mind you, I printed out only the copywork pages for her, not the title page, so she has no idea of the intended audience. Even so, I think it’s quite suitable for girls as well as boys.  A copywork ebook written specifically for both boys and girls is being prepared.

If you are looking for simple but inspiring copywork quotations for children in grades 1-6, you will find that Copywork for Future Heroes is fun, effective, and inexpensive.

This ebook is available for $5 from the author at Walking by the Way.  Check out the free sample pages if are wondering whether or not this copywork book would work for your family.

Disclosure: I was offered a free download of Copywork Lessons for Future Heroes in order to write this review. As usual, I have given my own honest opinion and was not compensated in any way for this post.

This review is linked to Trivium Tuesdays.

2 Comments

  1. Amy says:

    I love copywork! Really though, this is just a neat conglomeration of quotes, and you can do with them what you wish (memorization came to mind first!) Like you said, good for older students who can transcribe onto a separate piece of paper. Thanks for sharing with us this morning at Trivium Tuesdays!

    1. Annie Kate says:

      Memorization is a great idea for some of these quotes! Thanks for the suggestion.

Leave a Reply to Amy Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *