DonnaYoung.org Printables and Resources

I found this homeschool resource site today: DonnaYoung.org. This lady has been assembling resources and printables for your download and use, from forms to math to language arts and more, since 1998. Check out this snippet from Donna’s Copywork page:

A few ideas for copy-work and dictation….

Grades K-2

As soon as your child can write letters and words, he should begin copy work. The early form of copy work consists of your child looking at a letter or a word that you wrote on the whiteboard or a piece of paper and he copies it on his paper. This is a skill that your child should learn! It will take a while to master it, so do copy work several times a week. Start slowly, one or two letters or numbers at a time.

By the time he is in the first grade, he may be able to begin copying words. Sometime during the first grade you should introduce your child to a sentence. Choose simple two-word sentences such as [We ate.] [Boy runs.] [Girl plays.] Point out to your child that the beginning of a sentence is capitalized and the sentence has an ending mark. [a period] Over several lessons, you may wish to introduce your child to all of the ending marks. [period, question mark, exclamation mark]

Other punctuation: Should you wish to introduce your child to commas, you could approach it in this fashion: You could instruct your child to get 3 of his favorite items. He could write a sentence and include his items such as: I like balls, legos, and cars. If this is too distracting, then you could write a sentence on the white board for your child to copy. Sentences like:
[I see trees, grass, and birds.] [I race with Tom, Mary, and Bob.] This sentence could include capitalization instruction.

Head over and check out Donna’s site for more suggestions and plenty of downloadable resources.