Penmaship on Purpose

One of the great difficulties of being a homeschooling mom, is...well..., the fact that you are the mom! You are spiritually and emotionally invested in these children, they are more than a job or part time commitment. As a christian you also realize that scripture gives you clear direction about training up your children and redeeming every moment of the day to use for this purpose. We are also directed not to "provoke our children to wrath" (Ephesians 6). As a child, little irritated me more than handwriting practice. It always seemed to be filled with dreary useless drivel. I felt like a robot mechanically reproducing page after page of silly sentences. I have found a few good penmanship programs, like "A Reason for Writing" and "Classically Cursive", however these workbooks can get quite pricey and they still lacked the depth I was looking for.

One day my husband asked me to find a way to work the Shorter Catechism into our school curricula, my initial thought was how in the world will I find time to teach one more thing! As I tried to wrap my sleep deprived brain around the Chief's idea I had an epiphany! Not really as grand glorious as an epiphany, but rather a logical plan, my children would write the Shorter Catechism! In keeping with our classical education ideology they would do it three times over as well, once in manuscript as young children, then in cursive, and finishing up in advanced cursive! Not only was this purposeful penmanship practice that served a kingdom minded goal, it was going to save us some serious cash! I printed out the entire Shorter Catechism for free offline, then found some handwriting paper from Donna Young. I was even able to snag a cool picture from wikipedia for the cover of my binder, along with a brief historical synopsis.

I divided my binder into three sections based on manuscript, cursive, and advanced cursive. I then used my quintessential red pen to write out the individual questions and answers from the Shorter Catechism for each skill level, and placed it in a sheet protector within the binder. The fabulous part is that I am writing the Shorter Catechism myself three times over, which frankly I could use both the spiritual and the penmanship practice! Secondly it's yet another subject we can do with "the one room school house approach" which is my preferred method of educating our children. It working out splendidly in the Via Academy, the Chief is happy, and my precious blessings have penmanship on purpose.