The new-to-me blogger at Seasonal Soundings is an experienced homeschool mom of four. In the post Today in History she suggests an exercise she used with her four children when they were younger:

Each child was assigned a person or topic for the day about which they looked for in the encyclopedia. In this exercise, the older children learned to paraphrase the content and practiced their handwriting. The younger children were allowed to copy a few of the beginning lines of their topic.

This simple little practice was initially designed to help their handwriting. A side benefit was that they became familiar with names and places that they might not otherwise. Plus, I have kept those notebooks filled with information they wrote. They enjoy leafing back through all those pages, and I enjoy hearing those “Oh, I remember this!”

I’m doing something similar with a couple of my students. We have “copywork” each day–a quote or a sentence or two related to something that happened on that date in history. I haven’t been very consistent in doing this daily, but I hope to get better. It would be fun to look back at their copywork notebooks someday.

Homeschooling Tip of the Week #1
Homeschooling Tip of the Week #2
A Typical Day in Our Homeschool: Part 1,
A Typical Day in Our Homeschool: Part 2,
A Typical Day in Our Homeschool: Part 3.
A Typical Day in Our Homeschool: Part 4.