Copywork, Memorisation, Dictation ~ Philippians 4:8

During our logic years of learning we like to continue including scripture memorisation, and copywork - the extra slant is that, with the smaller pieces, once the scripture has been memorised and the copywork completed we try our hand at writing the piece as a dictation piece.

Not as easy as it may sounds... when one is using the KJV  ☺

I've tidied up our bible notebooking pages for Philippians 4 verse 8, and have placed them over at hslaunch for other to use if they'd like to at this link:

Bible Copywork: Philippians 4:8

Notebooking Pages: Florence Nightingale & the Crimean War

We've just completed our SOTW4 history week with the chapter on the Crimean War and since Daisy is mostly just participating as a tag-along with SOTW4 (going deeper with Bobs!) I'm making sure to include side trips for her, away from some of the topics we're reading about.

So while Bobs looked at the issues surrounding the Crimean War, it was time for Daisy to have another, more indepth, look at Florence Nightingale.

Bobs completed his SOTW4, outline notebooking page with ease. Using WWE has certainly helped him to sift through the details and get the main points down in a brief sentence - it'll be interesting to see how he goes when we get to writing from the outline portions of SOTW, activity book 4.
The narration piece, shown in the photo below - along with Bobs outline, is Daisy's.During Core K and our unit on nurses we enjoyed using water colours to paint this picture of Florence . Above is Daisy's artistic efforts during Pre-K & Core K. She'll be happy to have another 'go' at that picture.
And since we're carrying on a Victorian theme - Florence Nightingale's clothing is of interest to Daisy.

We've tossed together some Florence Nightingale Notebooking Pages (which includes some generic Crimean War notebooking pages also. Bobs is not fussed on using the style of pages
Daisy likes, photo below, ☺ so we've included some art work that Bobs preferred too.)

Florence Nightingale Notebooking Pages (includes lapfolds)                                                Links repaired 05/15. Now goes to dropbox - you don't have to sign up to download the file, just close that box and then hold down the Ctrl key and click Download.
Daisy completed her Florence Nightingale Cut-n-Craft notebooking page, above, using the Florence Nightingale paper doll.
Our notebooking page can be found here, over at dropbox.

While we read aloud The Drummer Boy's Battle ~ Florence Nightingale, by Dave & Neta Jackson (*note: pre-read before giving to sensitive children!!), Daisys enjoying colouring in, picture below, a hidden picture that I stashed away in our archives folder a few year back. Sorry, the original link I had for this picture no longer works..... you can send me a note at sldownunder dot g at gmail dot com if you'd like the page.
I did find the picture without the picture clues linked on one of Jimmie's lens ... (I'll try to find her lens again & place that link here... I may not be able to, look at all her lens ☺.)
Found it! Jimmie helped by placing the squidoo link it's on, in her March Notebooking Round up: Go to this squidoo post and scroll down to The Biography of Florence Nightingale portion and it's #4
For those looking for a Florence Nightingale notebooking page, for youngers, The Notebook Fairy has two.
Popping this here for others: We found this pdf in our travels that may suit your children.

Johnny Tremain - Language Arts Pages
Since we like to try to combine, or review, as many topics as we can in our language arts time, this week our current sonlight read-aloud (audio c/d in our case), Johnny Tremain became the epi-centre for history, grammar, spelling and dictation, narration, and cursive handwriting.
Bobs and Daisy love it when mum gets seriously organised to nail the subjects down neatly all into one short, did I mention short :), written piece.
Our language arts sheets, in the Writing With Ease style, can be found over at hslaunch.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Notebooking Pages

We all enjoyed this Sonlight scheduled read aloud, though I have to say Dn and I saved our voices and enjoyed it via the audio book with the children.
On our customised, Story of the World 3 & Sonlight Core 3, schedule you'll find The Witch of Blackbird Pond slotted in on page 1c, SOTW3 chapter: 15.
(We've edited our schedule a few times since we placed that one up on hslaunch, I may have to upload the schedule we are using now).
We appreciated the character lessons and history detailed in The Witch of Blackbird Pond and so I went ahead and created a few (very plain) pages for Daisy to use to go with this book, namely: a copywork page and a colour in page.
HSlaunch: Witch of Blackbird Pond Notebooking Pages

Poetry Copywork

Since me and mine are keen poetry 'appreciators' I thought I'd create this random post.

We like to have poetry copywork sheets, which include optional colour in themes for Daisy, to go with some of the recitation pieces we are working on.
Seems a waste to create these pages just for us and then leave them languishing in our files so I thought I'd share some of our past efforts that others may like to use too.

Poems include pages for:

The Caterpillar by Christina G. Rossetti

A Wise Old Owl by Edwards H. Richards

The Little Plant by Kate L. Brown

God is Like This by Rowena Bennet

I've detailed how we use them, should that interest anyone too, on the first page of the following pdf .

HSlaunch Poetry copywork pages.

Free Notepages - Prominent Figures in History

Free Notepages - Prominent Figures in History

I keep meaning to re-share this link:
Famous People Notebooking Pages from Activity Village.

It just saves a ton of time :-) to have pages "ready made" and easy to access on line when doing written dictation, written narration or copywork during SOTW, and Daisy is happy with alternate options to colour in during history read aloud time.

Actually... Jim Weiss has been doing all the SOTW reading for us so far, (smile) he's about to read us chapter 4.

Free Gift Tags or Cards

Someone else may be interested in using these small gift cards we've tossed together.

Simply print on a lite weight stock card, cut out each card with a stanley knife, fold, write (or get the childre to) inside & voila - all done.

We've put Peelcraft "Merry Christmas" word stickers inside each card.

Memorisation and Copywork Sheets.

We're throwing some sheets together, like the one above, for Daisy at the moment.

It's gorgeous spring weather and it's a little tough to knuckle down and get handwriting done, so I'm making some pages that will kill a few subject areas with one sheet.

I've place our sample sheet over at HSlaunch for any that may like to use it.

Bible Verses for Language Arts & Italics Handwriting Copywork

For the next wee while we are going to enjoy using Copycat Books KJV Proverbs as our language arts, handwriting sheets and memory verse provider.

Rhonda Roso details an easy approach in each e-book of how to go about achieving a 3 day study with each piece, should you need it.

There are more titles available than just KJV Proverbs, pop over to her site to take a look and download some free samples .

Albright News also offers some free, primary level, Proverbs copywork pages , too and each page contain some nice clip art.

George Washington Carver

Sonlight Core 4 Reader, and, Beyond Five in A Row

This book is actually one of our read alouds for Beautiful Feet History of Science , we read nearly all of the literature based books that go with that curriculum, coloured and created our time line, did 2 experiments, and crafted a few active scrapbooking pages to go with some of the scientists.

But, we saved a few books, George Washington Carver and the one about Marie Curie, to enjoy with Daisy at a later date.

Nicole Tadgell has some lovely colour in go alongs on her blog for the book she crafted the art work for, be sure to stop over and take a look.

Now that's one book that interests me, I really like picture books!

For NZ-ers bookdepository stocks this, free postage too.

I think we'll probably use some of the ideas out of our Beyond Five in a Row Manual and utilise a few of the pages I 'refound' amongst our list of links detailing a George Washington Carver Color in Book

Here and here are two other George Washington Carver colour in pages.

Edit this again ... I just found these G.W.C extras over at Garden of Praise .... and I think I may 'need' to make a lapnote page to attach this printable booklet to

And thanks to Nadene from Practical Pages she's let me know that she has these lovely copywork pages of George Washington Carvers quotes we can use.

Story of the World Vol.4 Notebooking Pages

& Story of the World 4 Lapnotes

These next set of pages are generic SOTW4 notebooking pages, in so much that they can be used for any SOTW4 chapter and topic.

I'm not sure just where our children's writing finesse is going to be when we get to doing written narrations with SOTW4 & Sonlight Core 4, so I decided to toss a few options for 'line size' in there now.

Anyone interested in using our Story of the World 4 Notebooking Pages can find them over here at HSlaunch

And don't forget that other free American history notebooking pages can also be found here.

We haven't added any extra cut-n-craft or art options - they are just basic lapnote and notebooking pages.

The crafting queue for SOTW4 is in pause mode for now, yet knowing us, I'm sure I'll be making other pages to go along with SOTW4 and as Sonlight Core 4 extras when we get closer to using those curricula (smile), but this is it for the time being.

Bible Copywork & Memorisation

We like to learn bible verses set to music, where we can, and to that end use some of the songs on The Harrow C/D's which Sonlight sells and schedules out in their IG's .


The words of each verse are so much easier for our family to memorise once we've completed a copywork sheet to go with it, I like to craft one too while the children are completing theirs.


We normally use Startwrite to create a lot of our copywork sheets since it models the exact handwriting style the children are learning to write in, but occasionally I like to throw together other pages in microsoft publisher - just because.


This weeks scripture is Proverbs 1:7 and you can find the pages (below) over at HSlaunch.
We place the typed verse in our blackboard 'scripture frame' on the wall (see 1/2 way down this post for those that like visuals) to be viewed all week, and Daisy enjoys the coloured in look.


For memorisation with our next Core 3/4, and SOTW3 & SOTW4, we are choosing to use some of the songs out of The Harrows CD's that are used alongside bible in Sonlight's Cores 3 and 4.


I'm not too fussed on the guides in the bible selection SL provides for those two Cores, so we'll be using something else.


With SOTW3 we'll be using a selection out of the books and C.D's shown in the picture below. We thought it would be a nice change to have a more focused introduction to hymnists and their pieces this next year, or 2, so that is where we have scheduled our plans to head - taking a leisurely amble through Stories of the Great Hymns while listening to the music C.D's when it suits (and the clincher for us was we already had these things tucked away on the shelves to use ...... sometime).
With The Building on the Rock series, which I've pencilled into the first part of our SOTW3 schedule, we will be using the shorter stories only and then reading the relevant bible scriptures they list to go with each story - some of the references are a perfect opportunity for smaller fingers to navigate flipping backwards and forwards through the bible to more than one set of scriptures.


The Mr. Pipes series does not give corresponding bible readings so we'll use some of Sonlight's bible reading schedule during that time - it'll work well for us.


With SOTW4, still fine tuning and thinking about bible time choices for that (smile)

Math Drill Sheet

One of children's music teachers is a retired school teacher and has these wonderful little snippets of wisdom and ways she occasionally shares with us.
One of them is a nifty little drill/practise sheet for multiplication - the idea is hers so please give credit to Mrs A. Safey should you chose to create your own sheets.
Or, you could just use these templates we've placed over at HSlaunch.

Math Drill Sheet at HSlaunch

How the sheet works:

Write out, or you could have the child complete a sheet first while you dictate ... the factors go in opposite corners of each small box and the product is written in the middle.
See the picture below....

Then for practice/ drill (great for a visual/kinesthetic/auditory child) a pencil is placed over the product area and and moved once they say the answer - 7, 7's are 49 etc.. self checking as they go.

Or, the sheet could be set up with the product box left blank in the middle and the child write the answer as they go. Though the sheets we've made ... the boxes are smallish for a child to 'scrawl' quickly in.

The boxes need to be small enough so that a pencil can fit over the product box before being moved across the page as each box is being 'reviewed', like so ...

Might not interest anyone else, but we like 'drill' this way :-)

Dragons Kick Start our Week

Bobbi and Daisy were listening, yet again, to The Hobbit and enjoying the part of Smaug and since I was feeling a little lack lustre about being back-to-learning in the midst of Winter we decided to take a detour and declared it Dragons Week...

Bobbi was given the choice which piece he wanted for 'written work' and, going with his choice, we threw together a copywork page using Startwrite which means we're not able to make that available for others to use.

The Reluctant Dragon got listened to also - Dad and the children are Wind in the Willows fans .... 'nough said :)

Some interesting conversations happened with Bobbi while we listened to Kenneth Grahame's work.

I like this fun how- to- draw page which was a weekly freebie and it seems to be a perfect go along for T.R.D.

Daisy re-hooked back into My Father's Dragon as a reader so we threw some language arts pages together for her, a la WWE style - and yes, it includes some of the necessary colour in pages she likes.

We've included some light grammar and a little spelling work, copywork style, in those LA pages.
** Pop over to HSlaunch if you'd like to see our My Father's Dragon Language Arts pages. (We've now fixed the typo's in the copywork).
Here is a cute free audio book of My Father's Dragon we have this audio version and it's been enjoyed extensively since Sonlight introduced us to Elmer and his Dragon in Core K.
For those that like lapbooks, don't forget Amy's My Fathers Dragon lapbook it looks like a fun activity!

For art we pulled out the clay and crafted some Dragon busts. We all enjoyed that. Pictures now added, and we're just got the painting of them to enjoy.
Math for Daisy, we all played though, was Dino Math. I know it's a stretch - Dinosaurs and Dragons - but it works, and it's one of my favourite math games :-)

Middle Ages Notebook Pages , Lapnotes and Colour in Sheets

Middle Ages Notebook Pages , Lapnotes and Colour in Sheets

We've just flicked some pages together to use for our study this week (yay, so happy to be, finally, studying this portion of history) of The Middle Ages (Medieval Times) alongside;
SOTW2,
SL2,
The Magic Treehouse Research Guide #2 ~ Knights and Castles,
The Making of A Knight By Patrick O'Brien
A Medieval Feast By Aliki,
A page or two out of DK Eyewitness Knight,
and, Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History.


{update: also take a look through our free pages for extra notebooking pages we've made}

I'm not sure, due to copywrite on 1 or 2 of the pictures, if we can share all these  - here  and here are the pages that we can.
Two of the lapfolds, in the second photo below, can be found at homeschoolshare.

Pages to study and label ~ A Castle and A Knight's Armour

Lapnote and lapbook folds detailing a Knight's Code of Honour, How to Become a Knight, How to Treat a Lady, and, Samuari Colour pages.

Medieval Colour Pages, Notebook Pages and an Art Page 

ETA: Why is it that after we've finished a study I stumble back across a great site like this one ... with most of the pages, I thought we might need, already done :-)

Most of the notebooking pages the children completed.

A Little Princess & Strawberry Girl

These are some more of those languages pages out of our files.

We ended up not using them, but I thought someone might if they were available.

A copywork selection has not been added to the pages, so a piece will need to be typed out for a child to copy from first.

A Little Princess The art on this looks hazy in the pdf on screen - the pictures print out clearly.

Strawberry Girl

White Stallion of Lipizza By Marguerite Henry

We've just created some language arts, & other, pages to go with this book, it is such a good base to rabbit trial from .....

Once we've trotted through our lapnote, geography and languages arts lessons with this book I'll post up pictures for viewing.

In the mean time, I'm not sure we can share this page with it's art work via HS Launch ............... .... but the pages that we are able to, can be found at these links:

White Stallion lapnotes with copywork and craft pages

White Stallion Language arts pages - copywork/narration/dictation

**(NB: We changed the grammar topic & the copywork piece for the L/A pages & forgot to update the end note, it should have it's gammar topic as metaphors not adjectives.

I'm suprised that no-one has (yet) felt so inclined to provide a 'ready- made-with-templates' lapbook for purchase or use with this excellent story .

A slide show of Vienna, and The Spanish Riding School can be viewed here.

Edit that :-)  After checking the link Flis mentioned in the comments area, do make sure you go over to   Jimmie's lens   to view 2 completed Lipizza lapbooks.

The Door in the Wall Copywork and Narration Pages

These are for our Core 2 Read Alouds and WWE L/A's text.

These pages for The Cricket in Times Square might interest someone esle since to date we haven't used them .... maybe we will, for Daisy, later.

Copywork and Narration Pages to go with Writing With Ease

While reading Sonlight Read Alouds we like to do our own spin with WWE, as out lined by Susan Bauer in this book. The children, and I, like the pages Susan provided in the 2 student books we have so we've continued on to make our own, very basic pages, with other literature.

(Copywork for Daisy is still being created in Startwrite's program.)

We inserted black line clip art to save ink :-) and also because Daisy does so like to colour in - anything she can.

Understood Betsy By Dorothy Canfield Fisher (Core 1 Read Aloud)

Peter the Great
By Diane Stanley (Core 2 History Read Aloud)

Tales of Robin Hood
Retold by Tony Allan (Core 2 Read Aloud)

Language Arts Sheets

We find some of these grammar sheets are good to use alongside Queen Homeschooling & Writing With Ease, also with the occassional reader, for early grammar review.
And these free grammar pages (scroll down) from Notebooking Pages are great to use for copywork or dictation, while practicing a grammar term.
Grammar Terms with sentence examples
Grammar Terms