Everyday Education, LLC Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting Review

For the last couple of months we have had the pleasure of using Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting by Everyday Education, LLC. This is a very simple step by step program that you can use to teach your child to read as well as how to write beautifully. You can use this program as your primary reading and handwriting program or as a supplement. We chose to use it as a handwriting supplement. The program consist of 60 lessons and is phonics based. It starts with Italic handwriting that progresses from straight to a slant and joined writing. It comes in both a downloadable version or a printed/bound physical book that has 218 pages.

We received the downloadable version of Perfect reading, Beautiful Handwriting. Currently the price for the downloadable version is $27.00. We chose to use this mainly as a handwriting supplement since both of the girls are already reading. The program is easy to download and navigate. It comes with some easy to follow basic instructions on how to use it. The writing pages start out with straight letters and progress on to slanted and then joined lettering. Chapters 1-5 are phonics based lessons and start out with straight writing. Chapter 6 is the handwriting chapter. In this area is where all the handwriting magic happens. Chapter 6 covers all of these handwriting areas.

• Different Ways Italic Can Look 170
• Using This Chapter 172
• “The Night Before Christmas” Copywork 174
• Slanted Letters 180
• Trace, Copy, and Finish 186
• Reproducible Guide Sheet: Slanted 187
• Writing in a Smaller Size 188
• Reproducible Guide Sheet – Smaller Size 189
• Joining Letters Together 190
• Joining Practice 192
• Using the Edged Pen 196
• Adding Serifs 200
• Reproducible Guide Sheet for Edged Pen 203
• Variations 204
• Joined Writing with an Edged Pen 208

We skipped ahead a little to the slanted lettering because the girls were already writing straight lettering fairly well. We did lessons about three days a week. I found this one chapter to be enough to improve the girls letter formation and they are beginning to understand how to connect the letters. Some pages we have printed more than once for additional practice. I still have to watch my lefty because she tends to start letters from right to left for some reason but over all we are seeing some slow improvements with her writing.

The first 5 chapters are the phonics chapters while we did not use these specifically I did look through them. I liked the way it was laid out the simplicity was nice and the instructions for teaching it were easy to understand. The phonics are very basic and great for a beginner just learning how to read. It makes it nice that they are learning how to write at the same time they are learning phonics. Buy combining both it is a great time saver and its nice to combine things when ever possible. 

If you click the banner below you can read how some of the other Homeschool Review Crew members used the phonics portion of the program.

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Homeschool Copywork Review

What homeschool mom doesn't love good copywork. I am excited to be using Homeschool Copywork we received a  Lifetime Membership and its awesome. This is basically a site where you can print some really great copywork. I am so happy I don't have to make to copywork my self any more. Copywork not only helps kids with handwriting but it also builds good punctuation and vocabulary and reading skills. The Site has something for most grade levels. We found Early Elementary, Upper Elementary, and Junior High-High School. We found copywork based around things like the human body, the Wright Brothers, lots of different scripture copywork sets. There are also character building pages. Not all of the copy work is scripture we did find some that were things like, poetry from Emily Dickenson and Lewis Carroll.We also discovered some different holiday themed sets that looked good.

Due to the girls ages and grade level we really only got the chance to use the Early Elementary Copywork section. I did explore the other levels just to see what was offered that we might be able use in the future. The Human Body pages will come into use soon enough.

Copywork is not the girls most favorite thing to do. I hear a lot of But MOM! when I pull out copywork pages every week. So when I first
approached the girls with this coppywork, I started them out with Dragons of the Bible Copywork, notebooking, and coloring pages. I started with this one because they both love Dinosaur's and I though it would be a fun way to kick off copywork. They both love dragons and dinosaurs so I figured it would be a hit. This set has 22 verses of the Bible that have to do with "dragons" (aka dinosaurs) These verses give proof to the existence of "dragons" aka dinosaurs and this book is based on creations science. It has both print and cursive in and full size dragon coloring pages. It contains 154 pages. I liked the cursive pages the best since that is what we are concentrating on right now. I have been satisfied with the verses they chose. We did find that on some of the longer verses the girls would run out of room on the lined portion. We have been printing some of the blank notebooking pages to give them extra room. My youngest would like smaller lines but that is just her personal preference. They are both enjoying the beautiful artwork that they are getting to color when they finish the copywork. Here is one of the Dragon pages that my oldest did. As you can see this verse was from Malachi. She was not happy with it because she didn't think her writing looked nice enough. I encouraged her to practice more and allowed her to select the next copywork page that interested her. I found that letting them choose what page to do next helps them to stay more interested.

I let the girls flip through some of whats offered and they are excited to do some of the holiday themed copywork pages. We found a Thanksgiving and a Christmas that look very nice. The Christmas one could easily be used as an Advent and comes in ESV and KJV. I was very pleased to see the Thanksgiving copywork pages. The scriptures that were chosen are beautiful and capture the real meaning of Thanksgiving. The pictures on all the pages we looked at were beautiful and offered the girls some coloring fun to enhance the activity.

Not only are the girls getting handwriting practice but they are also getting great scripture lessons and a little art all at the same time. Other crew members have tried out other copywork pages so you will want to click the banner below and see what they thought.

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