Storytime/Copywork question for Beyond...

[momof3kids]

Hi again all!
We are really enjoying our first few weeks doing Beyond. I just have a couple of questions and wondered how you wise women are doing things!!...First for copywork..how much to you ask your student to do per day??...do you always finish copying the poem by the end of the week??...I have been doing 2 lines per day..but didn't know if that was enough?...and the longer one this week will take more than that...and this is his least favorite part of the day, so would love any suggestions...
Also, for storytime...doing Biography...William Henry Harrison...how much do you read aloud per day???...we have been doing a chapter which is about 5-6 pages or so..and he does okay with this amount...but will be finished too soon if keep that up so just trying to find a balance! thanks in advance for any pointers or suggestions!!

[Molly]

At this point, I am having my son copy one line of the poem each day. I'm not worried as long as he is doing his best. I will keep it to about five minutes a day, so I imagine by the end of the guide he will be doing possibly three lines. As for the storytime, I look at the number of pages in the book and split it over 20 days, it doesn't always finish nicely, but some days we may end up reading more than another day if I find a better place to stop. Hope that helps.

[farmfamily]

Hello!

For the copywork, I had my then 6 year-old daughter work for 10 minutes a day in the beginning of the school year. However much she could copy neatly in that time was great. By the last ten units or so, I started trying to have her finish the poem by the end of the week.

For the story time, if the book has less than 20 chapters, I flip through and find the longest chapters and split them in half. That way we usually read a full chapter, but have a few shorter days here and there.

Occasionally we have done more than one book for a genre if the chapters seemed too short to split over two days. For instance, for historical fiction in Beyond we did Sarah Whitcher's Story and The Matchlock Gun. In general we don't like stopping in the middle of a chapter, and I'm willing to read a little more to avoid it!

hth

[MelInKansas]

Similar to what others said. When I started Beyond I thought we had to finish copying the poem every day. But then I discovered that the intention is for the child to do their best handwriting, and to work up to the whole poem throughout the guide. Oh!! It was the least favorite part of our school also with my oldest. So we slowed down and I tried to have her focus on doing it well instead of hurrying to get it done.

If it was a fast and easy read, I would keep going at the pace my child could handle and find another book to fill out the time. Or not do storytime for a few days if we finished the book with about 3 days to go or something. Generally though, like another PP said, I would split up chapters if there weren't 20 chapters. That makes it more exciting and part of what you are doing is taking smaller chunks of a book, really thinking about a shorter reading instead of trying to fill in a really long reading.

[luv2homeschool]

The goal for copywork is to practice good handwriting. If the kids had to copy a large section, their handwriting would probably be pretty poorly done by the end. There are a few short poems that we finished, but the majority of them we did not. I copied the poem and cut it up and gave it to my daughter 2 lines at a time (or even 1 line if it's long).

As far as storytime, I would generally divide the number of pages in the book by 20 and read that many pages in a day. We did read 2 biographies because Helen Keller was pretty short (so maybe you can do that next, my son actually really liked it, too). Some books divide easier than others.

[momof3kids]

thanks so much!..this really helps...I think we will stick to doing 2 lines of copywork..and not worry about finishing the poem...also, I like all the ideas for storytime....dividing up, and possibly adding another book to the short ones....
it helps to check in and make sure I am on the right track!

[my3sons]

Hi there! Like the ladies said, we too started with just a few lines of copywork. I did increase this every few months or so, as dc were able to do more. By the end of Beyond, I tried to have my dc copying the whole poem each week. This really helped the transition to Bigger Hearts the next year, with its increased writing, to go smoothly. I also just wanted to mention - the first day of the Storytime plans notes that the book should be divided out over a certain number of days (20 days usually, though I believe Folk Tales may be less.) We just divided the book out over 20 days in the best way possible (i.e. half chapters, whole chapters, or # of pages each day). The idea is to read through books slowly, as Charlotte Mason advocated, taking time to savor them. This kept our readings appropriately short and kept my dc looking forward with great anticipation to what would happen next! HTH!

In Christ,
Julie