The Old Schoolhouse Magazine’s Review Crew recently had the opportunity to review several selections from Laurelwood Books. As part of this review, I received one of the books from their Scripture Scribes series titled Men of Honor and Women of Grace. Since this level is for grades 7-12, I had Liberty, 13 and starting 8th grade this fall, work on Men of Honor and Women of Grace.
Scripture Scribes is a series of four books with a black and white approach to copywork. Men of Honor and Women of Grace is the fourth and final book in the series. This character-building level begins each lesson with a Dictionary and Biblical definition of the subject of the lesson, followed by quotes and verses pertaining to honor. There is a space to trace the quote or verse, then to write it for themselves. It includes twenty-two “lessons” of varying sizes, covering the following topics:
- Honor
- Mercy
- Compassion
- Love
- Justice
- Grace
- Joy
- Peace
- Truth
- Long-suffering
- Faith
- Hope
- Honesty
- Trust
- Patience
- Humility
- Gentleness
- Kindness
- Faithfulness
- Loyalty
- Diligence
- Purity
With the exception of two pages discussing the development of the Scriptures, two pages regarding translating the Scriptures,and two about copying the Scriptures, all 118 pages are copywork of verses and quotes.
Liberty was quite a few days in, working on a quote or three a day, before she commented, “All of these verses are about honor, Momma.” Umm, yeah! They are! We had a good laugh since the whole first lesson was covering honor — that was the point! She continued on each day, working several days a week and covering whatever she had time or hand strength to do. It’s completely adaptable to spend five or twenty five minutes per day, working at whatever pace you wish. Since the spaces to write in are double lines with a center dotted line and are quite small, it forced her to write far smaller than she’s prone to do. She wasn’t thrilled about that, although I think it’s probably time to learn to write small. Her hand cramped quickly because of this so some days she just did one quote, while others she worked on several.
Copywork is something we’ve done a little bit of here and there, but I am coming to think it’s quite valuable in our homeschool. I’m a huge fan of non-distracting pages, and Laurelwood Books fits the bill with this quite nicely with their Scripture Scribes series. Copying down quotes, contemplating what they mean, practicing handwriting, and paying attention to the detail of what is being written – punctuation, capitalization, and all, is great on so many levels. With several of my children not being “attention to detail” kind of kids, I think copywork is just one way to work on this skill.
Scripture Scribes: His Name Is Wonderful is for grades 1-3, Scripture Scribes: My Whole Heart is for grades 2-3, Scripture Scribes: One Another is for grades 4-6, and then this volume, Scripture Scribes: Men of Honor and Women of Grace is for grades 7-12. Each is $19.99 from Laurelwood Books.
You can find Laurelwood Books on Facebook!
Laurelwood Books offered several levels of their Latin curriculum, handwriting curriculum, and three of the levels of Scripture Scribes to the Review Crew for review – check out what the others thought of this books and the others as well!
