Equipping Our Children with a FULL Education

Good morning!

Our Last UHSE Preview Chat

Join us Thursday, April 26, 2007 for our Preview Chat with Harold Rushton, from http://www.Playmasters.info

Harold will be joining Cindy to talk about the topic, Equipping Our Children with a FULL Education.

Harold and Cindy have homeschooled for over 16 years. Their son, Matthew graduated after homeschooling the entire journey. Their daughter, Elisabeth is beginning her Senior Year after being homeschooled since Pre-school. In this seminar, Harold and Cindy will talk about how to provide our children with a full education that truly equips them for their call in life. Education is much more than another option. It is a life. Join Harold and Cindy as they talk about how to prepare your children for life with a full education. This will be one of your favorite workshops. Great for the whole family!

Join us for our next UHSE Preview Chat with Harold Rushton…

Harold will be teaching his workshop for us Thursday, April 26, 2007 in our Talk-a-Latte Conference Room. See the details here:

Don’t miss this awesome session!

Get to know Harold at his website:

http://www.Playmasters.info

Building a Successful Family Business

See Harold’s SUPER Special for all attendees!
His Business Super Set is only $29.95 (regular $99.95) for all UHSE attendees!
Order here!

Don’t forget to look for Harold’s “Vendor Booth” and extra goodies in our Mommy Grab Bag!

DETAILS YOU WILL NEED:

DATE: April 26, 2007
TOPIC: Equipping Our Children with a FULL Education

Scheduled Start Time:
6:00 PM Pacific Time
7:00 PM Mountain Time
8:00 PM Central Time
9:00 PM Eastern Time

CONFERENCE ROOM INFORMATION:

Name of Room: Talk-a-Latte
Password: letschat (password is case sensitive-do not enter any extra characters or spaces-password is only in effect during the actual chat)

OUR CONFERENCE ROOM…

We provide the software download-free. Here is the link:

http://www.cindyrushton.com/Conference.exe

Click to begin download or copy/paste into your internet
browser and click ENTER. It will only take a few
minutes to download into your computer, but you want
to do it ahead of time so you don’t miss a minute in
the Conference Room.

After it is downloaded on your computer, it will set
up an icon on your desktop that says CONFERENCE. Then,
you will only have to click it to open up the room.
Here are your instructions from there:

When you are ready to enter, you will enter your NAME
or EMAIL ADDRESS in the first blank.

Add the following information when prompted:

Name of Room: Talk-a-Latte
Password: letschat (password is case sensitive-do not enter any extra characters or spaces-password is only in effect during the actual chat)

Remember…your password is different for chats and other
classes. It only works for the room when the room is
open for the study.

I can’t wait to dig into our Preview Chat together! Get ready for a great time of study, fellowship, and relationship!

Talk to ya in just a bit!

With much love,
Cindy

PS! If you want to register for our event, get your ticket today at our website! See this link http://www.UltimateHomeschoolExpo.com

20 Questions…

20 Questions…

Today is a special day for us! Today we launch our Ultimate Homeschool Expo Membership Site at 1PM CST (we are on the countdown now!). I am SO excited!

Hey! Want to See Something AWESOME?

Hey!

I just got an email from my friend, Cindy Calvert. She is ??pumped?? about our Ultimate Homeschool Expo that is coming up. Actually she is SO pumped that she created a fun video that you simply MUST see! Just check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/v/ydE9pEN2FsU

Then, make plans to join us for the Ultimate Homeschool Expo. Get your ticket here:

http://www.UltimateHomeschoolExpo.com/

See ya there!
Cindy

Thanks to ALL of You!

How do I say, “Thanks” to all of you? This is one time that words are just not sufficient! You guys voted for me to be selected as one of the MVP’s of the Year! I am SO thankful! THANKS! THANKS! THANKS! There are many honors that we have in life, but this is one that YOU made happen! It means so much to me. I appreciate your confidence in me. I pray that I make you gals proud!

Here is my “official” Winner’s Badge:

Is that fun or what?

Because of all of you, I was blessed to be featured on Work-at-Home Moms Radio this week. WOoohoo! Want to listen in? Here is the link:

Download by Mp3

My interview was the first one in the show. Check it out!

Again, thanks so much for your vote. I think you guys are TOTALLY THE BEST! Ready to make this year the best ever? You have inspired me!

Love ya tons!
Cindy

Language Arts the EASY Way with Cindy Rushton

Just Try Copywork by Cindy Rushton

Copywork? What is that? How do you use it at home? What do I need? Where do I start? Oh! You are going to LOVE Copywork! In fact, I promise that you will find this one simple technique to be a MUST in your home. We did!

How We Stumbled Upon Copywork…

Copywork has been an answer to my prayers. I felt in my heart that workbooks definitely were not the answer for teaching grammar, writing, spelling, and appreciation of wonderful literature. What would do the job while doing it more naturally? Why??Copywork, of course!

We stumbled upon the idea of Copywork during some of the most trying days of our homeschool journey. We all have expectations of what our children can do in regards to writing. Our clash in my homeschool began as the combination of my expectations of my VERY verbal child met my personal love of writing and found a reluctant writer. It seemed that everything that I was doing seemed to be the wrong thing to do if I wanted to reach this little one. It was then that I ran across a God-send. I found Ruth Beechick’s small but mighty little book A STRONG START IN LANGUAGE. It seemed too simple! Certainly teaching children to how to write would need to be more difficult, right? Well??.hear ye, hear ye! ! I found that teaching Language can be as natural when teaching our children how to write as when we taught our little ones how to speak.

Only Ruth Beechick herself can fully explain why to use Copywork. In her book A Strong Start in Language she shares the following:

“This method is not new or experimental. It is an old and proven method, probably as old as writing itself. Great writers have used it and you have already used it with your child. But once children reach school age, we tend to shed the natural method for a slower, artificial method. Our society thinks grammar books or Language books somehow carry the secret of good writing, but few of them do.”

So how do we teach writing? What is the best way to begin writing your Homemade Books? Want to write a book, but have no idea where to begin? Well, the key is how we taught our children to speak. Ruth Beechick shares that there is a ??parallel.?? She says, “Listening and speaking are to spoken language what reading and writing are to written language.” She also says, “Children learn to write by writing.” What better way to teach our children to write books than by copying great models, then setting them up into a book of their very own?

Our Story??

When I began teaching my little boy, I tried to mimic my educators. The problem was that this method was laborious and when given opportunities to write, his work was difficult and very messy. The spelling was atrocious! I really saw this one-year at Christmas. When copying poems and writing letters, there were no blanks.

I decided to pull out Mrs. Beechick’s book and use her method of copying to supplement my workbooks. It was not very long until Matthew (who was known to have a strong distaste for even holding a pencil!) fell in love with his work. He had a reason to write and it became a pleasure! Also, he was sure that the work was correct because it was taken from great literature–good examples to pattern after. He would proofread his own work using the model. By doing this, he was also learning one of the most important skills necessary for great writing??to proofread his own work. He took great pride in his work and soon began to keep special quotes, verses, passages, and poems in his school notebook. It was not very long until his work began to result in ??finished?? products??his own homemade books.

There was a change in me too. I looked at his workbook with new eyes. This work was monotonous and did not really apply to what we were studying. I began to feel that all skills would be better learned if we could somehow make them apply to his studies because of his strong interest in them. That is exactly what we have done! So, here is what we are doing and how you can do it yourself!

Ready, Set, GO!

For the younger child, you will want to start by letting them copy their letters and later their name. For a fun book, make an Alphabet Book. Let them copy a letter per page and decorate that page with pictures cut out of a magazine or coloring book. If they are a little older, they can copy the letter and fill the page with examples of words using that letter. A fun and easy book!

All you have to do for a Copywork lesson is just print neatly on the top of a page, then encourage them to make theirs look like yours. I remember doing this with my mom when I was only a few years old. She would write names or words on paper in church for me to copy. Mom did this naturally…without any idea that this was a teaching approach. Now, the discipline is set in me??train up a child in the way they should go?

I was amazed at how much little ones learn from this. My little girl began on her own to teach herself how to write by copying signs and words on trucks as we would go down the road. She would copy from her storybooks, or even her brother’s schoolwork. I was utterly shocked when this brilliant (Yep! I am biased!) four-year-old child began on her own to do Copywork. We were riding as a family to town when I looked back to see what was keeping her attention in the backseat. She was sitting there with a copy of Charlotte’s Web copying the letters on the page. She had copied the title of the chapter and even several sentences without any prompting or even instruction. The only possible explanation of where she got the idea for this would be from this little genius catching the excitement from her brother’s Copywork assignments! This was how painless it was to begin Copywork with a child.

As she got older, I continued to copy her work in a model that I wanted her to copy. She often chose the selections that she wants to copy, but most of the time I copied several weeks?? worth of work for her to copy from. I always sat down to ??hand-write?? her models at this time because she struggled with the mechanics of letter formation. We did this for about 4 1/2 years.

It seemed like overnight, but she was ready to copy directly from great books. We had expected to transition her into copying her own work directly from the original source by typing her models on the computer using a font like Lucida Handwriting (or a program like Start-Write). This might work great for you. Then, you can use the pages for other children. Just type on the computer in a larger font and leave lines for them to copy on underneath the model (we have some reproducible pages included on the CD that comes with this book for you to use for this). Do this for a bit until they are ready to copy those models directly into their copybook. Then, they will be unstoppable!

As I shared earlier, I began Copywork with Matthew when he was in the Second Grade and Elisabeth was Pre-school. It took watching the Copywork begin to produce fruit before I would trust it and throw away my workbooks. We used Ruth Beechick??s little book A Strong Start in Language to supplement our workbooks for the Second Grade. It did not take very long for me to see that it was going to really work for Matthew!

I ripped out the pages that he had finished in the workbook, put them in his Copybook, then only used Copywork for the rest of the year. He made improvements in every area immediately! The neatest area was the transition from pencil-resistant to addicted to writing!

As he began Third grade, I often wrote an model for him to copy that could give an example of how to write the passage. We also used Learning Language Arts through Literature for formal grammar instruction. Matthew loved the nice, large print models to copy from their book. He also copied poems, Bible verses, and passages from his library books. His handwriting, spelling, and even grammar all improved so drastically that Copywork sold me!

In Fourth grade, I focused real heavily on oral narrations (which also make great books??more on that in the next chapter!). The children would orally narrate their stories back to me while I took down dictation. I would re-copy the passages as a model for them to use for Copywork. It only took about 6 months of this before Matthew realized that HE could create his own writing. He wrote his first essay that year without having to have a formal class in grammar. I was so proud. It sounded as if an adult had written the essay??only an adult would not possibly have had all of the humor and imagination that this wonderful little boy poured into that essay. I saw this wonderful fruit and realized that we were not only improving the basic mechanics of writing but we were also instilling a love of writing in this child. I was hooked!

Copywork healed this reluctant writer! In this short time, he was no longer frustrated, weary, reluctant, resistant! It was all beginning to fall into place!

In just a small bit of time, he was no longer scared of writing a bigger work like an essay! He considered it just as much of an adventure as curling up with a book, going back in time with an author??s work. He had spent so much time gleaning from these wonderful authors that he was ready to pour his heart out on paper!

This time of oral narrations and continued Copywork brought us into the next phase of writing for our family. Matthew was then ready for longer passages of Copywork, which gave him a deeper discipline of writing each and every day. My husband casually mentioned one evening that it looked as if he were trying to skim by and copy the least amount he could. That was all it took for my 10-year-old to begin on his own to copy a full page a day!

He also was skilled enough to begin one of his greatest projects all on his own. One day he confided in me, ??Mom, have you ever noticed that these Marine books never have a complete history in one book? That information is in all of these books. There needs to be a book on the complete history of the U.S. Marines.?? I listened as he went on, ??I guess I will have to write that one!?? I about fell out on the floor! I encouraged him to begin studying, that he would do a wonderful job with that. He began to take every minute of his free time to compile information for his book. His notebook was getting filled up more and more by the day. This was in addition to the regular Copywork he did each day.

As Christmas break neared, he began to write the story. During the Christmas break he finished the rough draft for the book in his notebook and typed it into the computer?? all completely on his own without any help from either of us (Yep! This is MY reluctant writer!). I was so proud to read such a nice piece of work. We went back through with me reading it to help teach about editing. I showed him how to use Microsoft Word??s Spelling and Grammar tool, which has a built in help function which tells you the rules that apply to your errors.

I also shared with him about how to develop a story by asking all of the questions that someone would want answered. I casually taught him that I was reading it as a novice (very ignorant mama!) wanting to know all about the Marines before I ended my time in his book (in which HE was the expert??vital if they are going to fill in all of the gaps!). I shared some questions about common words that he did not realize were not common to those who did not read as widely on that topic as he himself did. I was able to teach him that those were important gaps to be sure that his book detailed. I also shared questions that I had as I read. He was then off again writing his little heart out!

As Matthew wrapped up his Marine book, it set the stage for him to write other books on other topics of interest. The skills learned through writing that book prepared him perfectly for all other writing projects??essays, articles, research papers, and of course, other homemade books!

Through the years, we continued to use Copywork (even now in the High School years!). Most Copywork lessons resulted in simple additions to their notebooks. But, we have also seen larger collections of copywork result in great homemade books. The text was there beggin to go into a special project. All that was needed was setup, illustrations (many were in the notebooks already), borders, and a special touch by the children to make it their own. To date, one our company??s best selling books is a book that was compiled from Matthew??s favorite Copywork from the Civil War. FAMOUS COPYWORK OF THE CIVIL WAR was created after homeschool mothers began to see Matthew??s Civil War Notebook. They wanted some ideas to carry home to their young writers. The book was the perfect solution! Who knows? Your young writer may have a ??best seller?? just needing to be published!

Copywork is still a daily discipline??even several years after he graduated from High School and no longer has to complete daily assignments. But, it is also a personal discipline. I can brag as much on the Copywork as my darling child because I know that Copywork took the artificial out of learning language. Now, Language Arts is alive with purpose! And…we also have tons of great notebooks and books!

What??s So Special About Copywork?

There are a few things that happen when children copy passages. First, they are able to see their own mistakes and correct them without it being a judgment about their personal work. This is crucial if we want to encourage our young writers.

In the early years, it absolutely crushed my children if they thought that I was not pleased with their work. Although correcting their work was not personal, they simply could not separate correction from acceptance. They had worked so hard on their work, it was VERY ??personal?? to them. Copywork was the perfect way to just ??check up?? on their attentiveness, teach spelling and grammar, and instill the basics of writing in a non-confrontational way.

For a moment, just think of how much your children want to please you? Have you ever thought over what is happening during their school lessons? They pour out their heart in writing. Then, we take our permanent red markers and mark on their special creations. Disheartening! Frustrating! And…we wonder why they become resistant and reluctant to write MORE!

Copywork takes away the ??sting?? of grading and correction while teaching our children important writing skills. When my children were young, checking their work FOR THEM and finding grammatical and spelling errors insulted them. Letting them copy a passage, go back over their work themselves finding the errors as they proofread the copy, helped me to transfer the process to them while they learned the skill of proofreading their work until they have excellence.

Another big plus for the Copywork is the good example. The writing style of the author contributes greatly to expanding your child’s own style. Wouldn’t you love for your child to have the benefit of sitting at the feet of Robert Louis Stevenson, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Martha Finley, or Mark Twain? Well, they can! By reading, copying, and-later even narrating their great works, your child can be educated by the masters!

My favorite thing about Copywork is that my child is taught correctly from the start. The work reinforces correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Chances are that if they SEE things done correctly, they will repeat it in their own work. I love what Ruth Beechick has to say about this, “Children who know the most grammar are not necessarily better writers.” She adds, “…Students who are good writers can learn grammar better than students who are poor writers.” She finally says, “You can teach the parts of capitalization, punctuation, spelling, sometimes grammar, and numerous other matters day by day in the dictation and copying lessons. Some of them you will consciously teach. Many others the child will learn without your conscious effort.” Isn’t this far superior to learning what things are but not learning how to use it?

Looking at Matthew’s progress can see this superiority. It really has been so natural for me to teach him what good writing looks like. No, we have not been diagramming sentences, but he can write a fantastic essay! No, we have not spent years working through boring workbooks, but both of our children write professionally for magazines in areas of their personal/professional interest. No, neither he nor I can still figure out what a split infinitive is, but he loves to write and make homemade books! Yes, I do think this is superior to using these years laboring over the parts of speech before putting the pen in his hand!

How to Begin (and Keep On Growing) With Copywork:

–> First, begin with teaching the child to copy their name or the alphabet. Keep each page in a 3-ring binder (with sheet protectors! J ). Begin slow and continue steady!

–> Next, copy short one sentence phrases-Bible verses, quotes, mottoes, etc.

–> Continue working up to longer passages. Lengthy passages will take several days to complete.

–> For challenging gifted and older writers, assign passages longer and more challenging than a standard paragraph such as dialogues, letters, news stories, speeches, historical documents, etc.

–> Share your favorites by creating neat books. Create books with collections of your favorite selections! What a fun and easy book project!

Easy? Yep…it is that easy! Now, want some specific help with some trouble spots? Need tips for those little details that make it all easy? Here are some of those tips:

–> Look for great Copywork everywhere! You may collect passages for copying from biographies, letters, Scripture, novels, poetry, history texts, classics, and so on.

–> Get ready ahead of time! It would be best to prepare the night before and prepare some work for each day, as writing should be a daily assignment. Just read through your favorite living book that you plan to use for your family reading time. You can take a small quote and copy exactly as you would have your child write. After reading your selection the next day, allow time for your child to copy and check his work. It is that simple!

–> Use Copywork to teach grammar EASILY! If you would like to have grammar lessons, you may want to explain why it is written that particular way, for example, today we might notice why all letters in the passage are capitalized and look up rules in a grammar text. Not only are they finding the reason for the particular use of that rule today in this passage, they are also hearing and thinking about other uses of capital letters as you read through the various rules. Talk about an easy and natural way to teach parts of speech, grammar, and spelling! It does not get any easier than this! In the early years, we used this method once a week to give the children a nodding acquaintance with the parts of speech. As the years have gone by, they have amazed me by looking up rules all along the way??OUT OF CURIOSITY! Still, they will find something in their lessons that they have never seen (or noticed) and decide to look up the rules to figure out why it is ??done that way.?? I cannot think of a better way to learn the rules and RETAIN what is learned??which is far better than the way that I was taught growing up.

–> Use as ??text?? for your homemade books! Yep! What a great way to create a fun and easy book! Your Copywork book can be a collection of neat quotes like Matthew??s FAMOUS COPYWORK OF THE CIVIL WAR. Or another idea is to take a favorite passage and use that as the text of your book. Create your own illustrations. Then, you have a fast and easy book! One example of this was a book that Elisabeth created. She took her favorite Bible Verse, The 23rd Psalm, and used it as the text for her book THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD. Each page has a phrase with an illustration. Cute and FUN! You may have many ideas similar to this. Really, the sky is the limit here. So, you can really let your brain go wild! Need some ideas? Check out our list of ideas in our best-selling book, HOMEMADE BOOKS! YES! YOU CAN BE A WRITER TOO. You are sure to find some cute ideas!

Ready???

So…are you ready? Try your hand at Copywork. Been implementing Copywork and want to create a book??and QUICK? Chances are that you already have an entire text ready for its own ??spot?? in a beloved homemade book. So, go for it! Use Copywork as the text for your books. Illustrate the pages with cute borders and pictures that accent your passages. Make it fun and easy! The skills that they learn as they create a homemade book using their Copywork will help them to easily move to writing books using their own creative writing. It will be as natural as when they learned to talk??and you will have guided them along the way!

Need MORE help???

We can help! Make plans to join Cindy Rushton as she teaches her new workshop, Let’s Try Copywork, this week for the Ultimate Homeschool Expo Preview Chats. Find out more here:

http://www.ultimatehomeschoolexpo.com/?page_id=15

Let’s Talk about Courtship with Ron Wright–Part Two

Join us for a wonderful interview with Ron Wright from http://www.BeforetheKiss.com. You will love this one! Our topic was:

Let??s Talk about Courtship with Ron Wright

Wondering, ??Just what IS courtship??? or ??Is there another option for our those wanting a great foundation in their marriage??? Yes! There is! Join Cindy Rushton as she welcomes Ron Wright from http://www.BeforetheKiss.com to talk about courtship. You will see God??s plan for the godly marriage from new eyes. You will be given an action plan for helping to prepare your children and teens for the greatest call of their lives??a passionate, forever marriage! Don??t miss this awesome interview!

Download Part Two by Mp3
http://www.cindysdesktop.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/CourtshipwithRonWright??Part2.mp3

See Ron Online:
http://www.BeforetheKiss.com

Mom-to-Mom Radio Show:
http://www.MomtoMomRadioShow.com

Let’s Talk about Courtship with Ron Wright–Part One

How About a FUN Freebie???

Find More Time for YOU Mama E-Book!

Download Here

Counting Down to the Ultimate Homeschool Expo!

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