Homeschooling Copywork is a cornerstone of education in the elementary years (both in the Classical and Charlotte Mason education models). This is for good reason: handwriting is an integral component in acquiring language skills and has the potential to benefit your child in many ways.
But you can also use the educational power of copywork for Bible memorization.
What is Copywork? Why is it Valuable?
Copywork is a timeless technique in writing instruction. Children write letters and words as they see them written on a page.
- Copywork, at the most basic level, helps a child with handwriting. It gives children practice learning and improving their letter strokes.
- Copywork reinforces letter and word spacing.
- Copywork helps a child learn punctuation and capitalization.
How to Memorize Scripture
Young children are very capable of memorizing long passages of Scripture. As soon as a child is capable of communicating their thoughts, they can begin memorizing Scripture. I’ve seen my own children memorize Scripture from a young age, and we have written on both how and why we memorize scripture.
We as parents must have the discipline to consistently reinforce this. The primary way we memorize passages of Scripture in our family is through verbal repetition.
Every night, during our family devotions, we go through what we have memorized of the chapter of the Bible we are currently working on. Once we have the first verse memorized fairly well, we add on the second verse (or a portion of it).
Every school day, we use a memory box. In the daily portion of this memory box is our Scripture we are memorizing as a family. This gives our children another time during the day they are going through the Scripture. It also gives me a structured routine to continue having the Word of God regularly in front of us.
Use Copywork for Bible Memorization!
The more senses that are involved in Bible memorization—using eyes, mouths, hands, and ears—the more thoroughly the Scriptures become fixed in our children’s minds. We can more firmly hide God’s word in our hearts.
This motivated me to develop copywork printables to aid Scripture memory. Copying Bible verses and writing them as they are dictated involves involves multiple senses, allowing my children to learn much more quickly.
Copywork Printables: Write Through the Bible
I created my own Bible copywork curriculum, combining handwriting, Scripture memory, vocabulary, and dictation into one workbook—one daily activity.
The first year we used this, we were memorizing Philippians 2:1-18 as a family, so that was our very first workbook. Since then, a whole family of workbooks has come into being!
As a mom of four sweet, rambunctious, crazy boys, it behooves me to multi-task wherever I can. This curriculum fits the bill! I am excited to be offering it to my readers and pray that it will help children love the Bible and the One who inspired it.
Download your own copy or learn more about Write Through the Bible curriculum.
Just downloaded these. I am looking forward to starting this with my son Monday. Thank you!
Great post! I love copywork =) I shared it on fb and am going to pin in on my copywork board on pinterest.
Thanks Amy! I appreciate you sharing 🙂
These look AWESOME! I just pinned it and tweeted it. Blessing to it!!!!
I appreciate it Dollie!
This is fantastic! Thank you for the discount code too. I’ll be starting this with my daughter on Monday. (We’re only 3 weeks into our new school year, so the timing couldn’t be more perfect!)
You are very welcome. I’d love to hear how it goes after you’ve used it for a while!
Thank youj!
Thank you for this! We just ran out of our copy work for the year and Jennifer Hoskins shared your page with me. It was an answer to prayer! Thanks again! And God bless you and your work!
This looks great! I love how you get the vocabulary in there! I think we are really going to like this. Looking forward to other passages! Good work! Thanks!
Thanks Cheryl! I’m all about multi-tasking where I can. It makes school go so much more smoothly 🙂
Thank you so much!
This is just great!! We used copywork with all our seven children for copying Bible verses and history passages. They memorized so easily!! They each copied out the New Testament and some did Psalms as well before they graduated. It works and is a great way to hide Sricripture in their hearts. Terrific post!!
Just thought I’d update my blog info since it has changed 🙂
Thank you SO very much! This looks wonderful. i cannot wait to use it with my daughter.
I shared this in G+ groups, my blog’s FB page, Pinterest groups and on Twitter after I downloaded it.
So nicely done Tricia!. I am very grateful for this wonderful resources you’ve been so generous with…thanks!
You are very welcome! I hope it proves to be a blessing to your family. The Philippians edition will be free until May 4! We also released a Psalms edition and plan to release an Exodus edition (includes the 10 commandments) this weekend! You can find them here if you’re interested!