How I Use 2 Writing Practices to Improve My Kids' Mental Clarity

What if just two simple writing practices could completely change how your kids think? In this video, I'll show you the methods I use to help my kids focus longer, retain more of what they learn, and express their thoughts clearly. These aren't complicated. They're practical, everyday tools that build real mental clarity. If you want to help your child think sharper and communicate better, this is for you. It's a new day and in February, sometimes we have to work a little harder to stay consistent. I don't know about you, but sometimes I have to dig deep and remind myself to take advantage of these winter months when we're all inside because I know soon it's going to be beautiful out. It'll be spring and we can all enjoy the warmer weather. We started our morning as we normally do, watching world watch news and then having our morning time together. This morning, we got out our simple morning time notebooks and worked on our memory work, our spelling patterns and rules. We started this week a new artist, Mary Cassatt. We reviewed our spelling patterns and rules. We did a proverb a day. On another day this week, we read the missionary story of John Patton, who was a missionary to the South Pacific Islands. It was so inspiring. So we've been making a lot of progress in our work, but I want to spend some time this video talking to you about two writing practices, copywork and narration. And I want to go into detail and tell you how these two practices are underestimated, underutilized writing tools that have completely transformed the way our kids think. Today in our spelling patterns and rules, we reviewed the five jobs of silent E, writing random lists of spelling words completely out of context doesn't make as much sense to me as talking about the patterns that you see in spelling. This is something that kids can remember and identify. I usually review the pattern with my kids and then have them help me come up with words that fit into that category. Learning patterns and rules along with daily practicing copywork has worked well in teaching my kids how to be good spellers. We finished up our morning time by letting the older kids go and I kept our younger kids with me to read the Bible story. Right now we're reading the story of Moses. After morning time, we all split up. Everyone has assigned chores. We assign chores by zones. We have the kitchen, the living room, another room. We call it the school room, although really it's just a second living room. We don't have a designated school room. Then we also have the upstairs bathroom and the downstairs bathroom. And then our younger kids just have random chores that I assign to them. I usually get a load of laundry started and help with the cleanup. As we talk more about writing and these two habits that have been so transformational for us, they are so simple that you don't have to be a homeschool family to incorporate these if your child is struggling. These are practices you can implement and they won't take a lot of time. But I want to give you a little backstory to help you understand why I've become such a believer in copywork and narration. If you're new here, hi, my name is Sheri. I'm a Christian homeschooling mom. My husband and I have 10 children and I love encouraging other families here on my YouTube channel and on the blog ourlifehomeschooling.com. I wasn't always a homeschool mom. At one time I was a public school teacher and when we had our first child my priorities in life completely shifted. I didn't want to waste any time enjoying him and raising him and so we pivoted and made some substantial sacrifices so I could stay home and raise him. As he grew and as we had more children, we began to think about homeschooling and one of the reasons I was so drawn to it was that I felt like our kids could learn so much more in less time and I really found that to be true. But as the kids got older and we started getting past handwriting and into teaching them to write, I began to hear more and more about the practices of copywork and narration. Now if you're completely unfamiliar with these terms, they originated with Charlotte Mason, at least she's who is credited with them. She was a 19th century British educator who in many ways was ahead of her time. Copywork is simply hand copying excellent pieces from quality literature and narration is the art of telling back a story. Now as we were getting more and more into homeschooling, I just kept hearing more about copywork and narration and especially given my public school teaching background, I was skeptical. It seemed too simple. How can this be very good? How is this affected? In spite of my misgivings, the more I read and the more I talked to veteran homeschool moms, I became one over and decided to give it a try and we've been homeschooling now for 16 years. Copywork and narration are regular habits in our homeschool. They're not the entirety of my writing curriculum, but they are the sign. If other things don't happen, copywork and narration always happens. Let me start first by talking about copywork. Copywork covers so many skills. It's like a multivitamin. You learn sentence formation, punctuation, spelling, capitalization. When you copy scripture, poetry, excellent pieces from classic literature, you are imitating the work of great communicators. Think about it. What is the grand goal? It's to teach our kids to communicate well. As soon as our young school-age kids are able to write a sentence fluently, I have them begin practicing daily copywork. When they first start out, I will write the sentence on the paper for them and have them write it below me. Usually for early kindergarten, first grade age kids, we'll use K-lined paper, which is the paper with the dots in the middle because their skills are still growing in those fine motor skills. When they're ready, we'll move on to lined paper. Eventually, the more they do copywork, I don't need to write it for them. They can copy a text by themselves. A general rule of thumb that I use is to have a child who's in first grade copy one sentence, second grade copy two, and so on. This really is a generality. It varies with each child. Another way to measure how much your child can handle is that it really shouldn't take any more than 10 to 15 minutes. If it's taking longer than that, if they're frustrated, you may have assigned them too much. Now, copywork and typing are not the same thing. Typing is an extension of copywork. When our kids are ready for it, I'll have them start a keyboarding typing program that we use online. I'll link that below if you're interested. Then once they've mastered that, I will often have them type their copywork to continue their typing skills after they've mastered the program, but it never replaces handwriting the literature. I like to compare it to traveling somewhere either by car or by foot. If you go by car, you're going to notice a lot of things on the way, but if you walk somewhere, the landmarks are going to be more distinct in your mind. You're going to remember it more clearly. Now, I do have a few more things I want to say about copywork before we move on to narration, but I just want to show you right here that I finished reading this book, George Washington. It's one of my favorite books by Ingrid and Edgar Dallaire, with it being February. It's a great month to study the presidents. Here, our son, Will, is giving an oral narration. I always have our kids narrate to me orally before we ever move on to written narrations. After we finished the book, he is working on some George Washington copywork. This you can find on the blog ourlifehomeschooling.com. I'll link it below for you. Dallaire is such a wonderful writer and illustrator. Together, they won a Caldecott medal in, I think, 1949 for their beautiful illustrations. I created this copywork from the book. It's perfect for a child in the elementary ages because it's just about one to two sentences, and I'll put mine in a slip cover like you see here. If a child really needs help, I'll use a dry erase marker and box the section that they have to work on for that day. The way I've always done copywork is to get a spiral notebook. Every child gets one at the beginning of the year. You put their name on the outside, and then for each day's entry, they learn to write the date in short form in the margin, and then they write their copywork beside it, and then just leave a couple lines between each day's copywork. This is really great because you're able to see them progress over the years, and this is a point that is really important. If you're expecting to see major progress in your child's writing because you've started this practice of copywork, you're not going to see it in a month or maybe even two months. It takes time. It's a habit that produces great results over time. Something else that really is a make it or break it with copywork is that you must check it regularly. It needs to be checked daily. This is the time when I'm able to show my kids their spelling mistakes, their punctuation mistakes. This is where the real learning happens. If you're not checking your kid's copywork and taking the time to go over this with them, then you're missing a huge learning opportunity. If they have words spelled wrong, I have them correct it, and then I have them write it two or three times below just so that they can visualize it in their mind. The second writing practice is narration, and this is what my daughter is doing here now with me. She's reading a story from child's history of the world, and she's telling it back to me. She's been doing oral narrations for quite a while now, and next year she's going to be ready to move on to written narrations. Now, I don't know about you, but when I was in reading class as a child, we usually had to read a section, and then we were given comprehension questions on it, and they were usually random. You just go back and you find that specific answer. When you have to answer comprehension questions, you may be able to tell random facts or random details about what you read. Narration is different. Narration takes it a step higher, and you have to remember details and put them in order and then express them clearly. This requires much higher thinking skills. Now, if you don't believe me, I challenge you to try this yourself. I did this many years ago because I was skeptical about narration. We were in the kitchen. My husband and I were making dinner, and I said, I'm going to read this short paragraph, or I think it was a little story, and then I am going to tell it back to you. So, I read the paragraph, he read the paragraph, I gave him the book, and I tried to tell it back to him, and it was hard. It required much more thinking than if he had just asked me some pointed questions about it. Trying narration for myself was really what convinced me that it is an effective writing practice. Today, for our lunch, I made this sausage and potato soup. It has chicken broth, onions, a little bit of spinach, and some milk. It was so warming on a cold February day. If you want to see the positive results that so many have experienced with narration, you need to read quality literature to your kids. This is key. Kids can only express what they possess. I start teaching my kids to narrate as soon as they can talk. Whenever I'm reading a book to them, I'll ask them, what is this animal, or who is that, what did she do, and as they get older over time, you can ask them, tell it back to me, what happened? And with young kids, I don't try to read a whole story and have them narrate back to me. I'll usually read a couple paragraphs and stop and ask them to tell back to me what happened, and then a couple more paragraphs. This is a developmental skill. When you first start teaching a child to narrate a little bit with a little more detail, so not just like a toddler answering questions, it can be frustrating your first couple times teaching them to narrate because they can't remember or they don't have much to tell you. And the reason for this is because they haven't been paying attention. When you're required to narrate consistently, it forces you to pay attention to the details of the story. This is the brain work that is happening. Your mind is actually having to focus for longer periods of time and remember details because you're going to be expected to tell it back. After a child has been orally narrating for several years, usually around third or fourth grade, I'll have them move on to giving written narrations. And one of the ways I prepare my kids for this is I have them give me an oral narration and I will type it on the computer as they tell it to me. And then I'll have them look at what I wrote and read it back to me. And this helps them to see what they're missing. If they have too much, it helps them to see all their ums and likes. It's a great way to prepare them for doing their own written narrations. Once a child is old enough to consistently practice narration, I don't necessarily have them do a written narration every day. You can. I've gone through time periods where I did that. I realized it was something they needed more practice with and we did it every day. But two to three days a week for a written narration is a sweet spot for us. Although I am always having them orally narrate to me even after writing regular written narrations. Once again, checking their narrations and talking through them is so important. This is where the learning happens. This is where you teach them how to communicate more clearly. You show them their mistakes or ways they could have said it better. We also include other things in our writing curriculum. For example, some formal grammar lessons and some of the spelling patterns that I was talking about at the beginning. However, I'm such a believer in copywork and narration that they are the core of what we use. If this video was helpful to you, I hope you'll like and subscribe. I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms. I'll see you next week.