Copycat Books
Reviewed by Anna1111
Purchase details: Copycat Books, all titles just $5 as e-books.
The Copycat Books website is an online resource that provides down=loadable books of copy work. These materials are incredibly affordable ($5 for most titles at the time of this writing), and are very beneficial. We have been using them for a couple of months, and I have already seen great improvements in my daughter's skills in forming letters and spelling.
The manuscript selections are designed for Kindergarten through second grade, and contain short sentences for children to read and copy. Three styles of Manuscript are offered, Traditional, Modern & Italic. There are two titles, with more to come. The first is "Bible selections from the Psalms," and the second is "The Basics," which is a collection of short sentences about everyday life, nature, going to church, eating dinner, safety and other everyday things in children's lives.
The cursive selections are designed for third through eighth Grade, and contain longer sentences with more advanced structure and vocabulary for older children to copy. The titles include Proverbs, Psalms, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.
There is a nice selection of free printables on the website, so that you can try before you buy.
This is a fairly straightforward product, designed for three possible uses. A student can do simple copy work, to help develop skills in printing or handwriting and spelling. A student can also do assisted or unassisted dictation, to assist them in such skills as taking notes in class, paying close attention, and memorization.
The materials may be printed, hole punched, and stored in a binder if you like. There's even a free printable binder face page and spine. If some pages need extra emphasis, it is easy to reprint the needed pages.
Recommendations:
This is a great product for teaching basic handwriting and it is enjoyable to use. My daughter has been using this product for several weeks and is currently naming writing as one of her favorite subjects. Having a selection to copy provides some meaning to writing practice, which makes it more enjoyable than copying random letters or words, as well as providing some education in the subject being copied. (We have been using the Biblical selections.) I especially like that we can turn back a few pages together to see how far we have come - and we really have made a lot of progress with this program! It really helps my daughter to see what she is aiming for, and how much her work is improving. We were previously using a dry-erase program, but at this stage in her learning, it is so much better to have a printed booklet so that she can be motivated to improve.
I have read through the manuscript Psalms and Basics programs, as well as the cursive Proverbs and Ancient Greece packets, and they were wholesome, educational, and well designed. I could find nothing in them that I would expect any Christian user of any denomination to find objectionable. (As a vegan, I might remove a few of the several references to eating meat, but that's just me.) In the unlikely event that you do find a page that you'd rather not use, it is easy to remove that page. The Ancient Greece packet does provide information on the pagan gods, but nothing that is discussed from a non-Christian perspective, and only what is really necessary for a basic education on the topic.
Looking at the Ancient Greece packet, I can envision designing a unit study around this product. Each day's writing practice covers a different facet of the Ancient culture, so that a young person could do some research and reading (or artwork, plays, etc) on the provided topic each day, and by the end of the course have a very well-developed understanding of this part of history. I'm sure that the other historical packets could be used similarly.
I find a couple of minor drawbacks to the materials.
- The example for copying is not written on lines. For a child just learning to form their letters, you might find that you have to write an example of a "t" crossed in the right place, or a lowercase "o" that conforms properly to lined paper.
- The practice lines are rather narrow for a beginning writer. When I began writing as a child, I had paper that had lines about 1" high. These lines are about 1/2" high. For young children who are just developing fine motor skills, a choice of larger lines might be helpful, but my daughter is just learning to be more precise with these smaller lines, and that also has advantages.
- Some families prefer to teach cursive first. For those families, it would be great to have a simpler text in Cursive (Grades K-2 in a cursive font).
Since these are downloaded materials, you will need access to a printer.
All in all, I highly recommend this product for any and all families teaching printing then cursive. For families teaching cursive-first, the cursive materials are too advanced for beginning students (very complicated grammar, spelling, concepts), and I would encourage the publisher to produce additional materials for young children learning to write in cursive.
HomeschoolChristian.com resources related to this review:
Review of Spell to Write and Read
Review of Handwriting Without Tears
Review of Italics, Beautiful Handwriting for Children
Review of SmithHand Handwriting
Interview with Bruce Smith, Ph.D. on developing elegant handwriting
Interview with Michael Sull, master penman
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