In Week 2 of Writing Aids, it says to start dictation (for level 6 & 7 anyway). I decided to go w/ studied dication, which I believe Charlotte Mason encouraged.

I printed each child a sentence from their literature book onto a piece of blank white paper and gave this to them on Monday. We went over the passage and talked about the punctuation & spelling.

The paper then was kept and filled with little drawings (mostly hieroglyphs) during the week while they listened to book The Cat of Bubastes and Story of the World on CD. Focused doodling!!

They didn't use it everyday. Often my 7yob just wants to curl up and listen, and my 10yog & 12yog made canopic jars out of Sculpy one day. But was definitely a success!

Now, I must stop posting and plan week 3!!
Lee

Call me clueless, but did you later dictate the sentence for them to copy later in the week. Or was the process mainly to study the sentence and its structure? Thanks!

Yes, I did dictate the sentence to them. They had a sheet of blank lined paper and had to write their first & last name (a rare occurance here!), date and the word "Dictation." Then I read the sentence through once. And they wrote it. If they hesitated, I would repeat the phrase. They self-corrected their papers using the model paper, so it no longer shows the errors.

We've done copywork in the past but I really didn't feel they learned from it -- it was sort of mindless activity.

Lee