Archive for the ‘Copywork Quotations’ Category

Famous writers talk about writing

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. – Ernest Hemingway

What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. – Anne Lamott

Writing is easy:  All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.  – Gene Fowler 

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.  – Samuel Johnson 

And this one is too true…

The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.  – Agatha Christie 

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Copywork Monday

This week, we are introducing a new feature on the blog. As you send them in, I will post them. I am looking for quotations or passages that you’d like to share with other moms to use for copywork.

Here’s this week’s entry from Rhonda in GA:

Hey Julie — I just ran across the most beautiful piece of copywork. I wanted to share it with you in case you might wish to consider it for a future Arrow publication. I hope you don’t find me too presumptuous!

It’s from the book I, Juan de Pereja by Elizabeth Barton de Trevino. Page 138, third paragraph:

    I knelt a long time, for I had much to offer up to God, and I placed before Him countless thoughts, so that He might winnow them like a thresher, leaving me the wheat and blowing away the chaff with the breath of His mercy. When I rose my knees were stiff and I felt tired and old, though I not not then completed forty years. But I was strengthened in good resolutions and at peace, and so I gave myself the pleasure of strolling from altar to altar in that enormous, impressive church. I paused a long time before the sculptured Virgin, sorrowing with her dead Son in her arms; it was a Pieta of Michelangelo, so moving and tender that it brought tears springing to the eyes.

I think this paragraph is a good example of the capitalization of anything related to God — as in “He might…” and “placed before Him….” and “the breath of His mercy.” There is also the capitilization of the title of Mary, the mother of Jesus and an object of art along with the name of the artist.

And besides, I just love the spirituality of this passage! Listen to how Juan de Pareja gives his thoughts and concerns over to God and what He expects God to do with them! Beautifully written!

Just wanted to share this….I had to read it aloud three times to my girls because I loved it so much!

I just wanted to add that the current convention for referring to God in the “he” form in writing is to not capitalize. There are times when some writers prefer to use capitals to reference God as a way to emphasize the importance of God or the writer’s personal faith or for some other reason. However, it is not wrong, in other words, to not use capitals when writing “he” for God and, in fact, is often preferred in most published works today.

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Too many words!

We need poetic relief!

Here’s a poem for you mothers. It’s one of my favorites. You can copy it into your copybooks. 🙂

By Wislawa Szymborska

“Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Experience”

So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.
Holes punched in a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo–a white mute.
Quiet.

Yeti, down there we’ve got Wednesday,
bread and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Roses are red there,
and violets are blue.

Yeti, crime is not all
we’re up to down there.
Yeti, not every sentence there
means death.

We’ve inherited hope–
the gift of forgetting.
You’ll see how we give
birth among the ruins.

Yeti, we’ve got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire
and violin. At nightfall,
we turn lights on, Yeti.

Up here it’s neither moon nor earth.
Tears freeze.
Oh Yeti, semi-moonman,
turn back, think again!

I called this to the Yeti
inside four walls of avalanche,
stomping my feet for warmth
on the everlasting
snow.

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Candles

candle

One of our Brave Moms mentioned the power of candles to calm the atmosphere and induce her children to copywork. Her post on Scratch Pad reminded me of the power of candles in the homeschool!

We’ve used them in the following three ways:

  • For copywork (light one in the middle of the table)
  • For teatime (several tea lights look gorgeous with teatime)
  • For quiet hour (I used to light a candle in the living room for half an hour of quiet reading every day. The whole house had to be quiet until I blew out the candle.)

Candles soothe children and adults alike. Let us know any other creative uses for candles in the homeschool!

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Little House Copywork Idea

My daughter (9) and I are reading the Little House books. She is choosing to do copywork from On the Banks of Plum Creek. We discovered that we could also Xerox the pictures (they are ink drawings) and she could color them to go with her copywork!

She used our Prismacolor colored pencils to color them in. Gorgeous!

At the end of the book, we will combine her pictures and copywork into a bound product (Kinko’s binds for cheap). She’s enjoying the whole process and I thought I’d pass on this idea to other kids who enjoy the books and the idea of coloring.

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