We have long felt that pensmanship has become a lost art. In an attempt to develop what we believe to be necessary and beneficial handwriting skills, we have taught cursive handwriting in our school. Bearing Fruit as a Christian (NASB) – Gospel Verses to Copy in Cursive was a welcome addition to our homeschool classroom and met many of our current penmanship needs. As a Christian family, we have been studying the Fruit of the Spirit and the verses within the copywork book were well suited and a welcome addition to support those studies.

Bearing Fruit as a Christian is a 78-page instant downloadable pdf product retailing for $8.80 and contains 46 bible verses (NASB) to learn, meditate upon and copy in cursive. Included within the 78 pages are a full-color cover page and two introduction pages, a scripture memorization how to page, 29 scripture copy work pages, three scripture poster coloring pages, seven pages with review crossword puzzles, two word search pages, four coloring pages, four mystery verse pages, fourteen reproducible lined pages, a single page about the author, Joymarie Dunlap, and seven additional pages containing other works available.

Colored printer ink could be a concern for some with this downloadable product as the copywork pages each have a beautiful full-colored artistic rendition of a piece of fruit. Although provided in color, these pages are still beautiful printed in grayscale without affecting the overall worksheet quality. The crossword puzzles, word searches and scripture poster coloring pages are all in grayscale. There are multiple reproducible lined pages, four with full-color fruit images and ten in grayscale. These pages are complete with standard penmanship lines of varying sizes allowing an appropriate lined sheet based upon students handwriting ability.

The website indicates that this product is appropriate for students, age five through high school. The standard penmanship lines on the copywork pages seems adequate for most students learning cursive. It is not too big and not too small. It does seem to be slightly larger than natural handwriting and therefore awkward for older students as well as students that have already mastered cursive. It is for this reason that the reproducible pages at the back of the book are available.

We used Bearing Fruit as a Christian (NASB) – Gospel Verses to Copy in Cursive in our homeschool as a daily handwriting exercise. I liked that the sheets could be completed in any order, allowing us to use the worksheet that coincided with our family devotions on the Fruit of the Spirit. Our oldest child (11) has already mastered penmanship. She would often complete the copywork sheets in less than ten minutes, even though she treats her penmanship like art and would often take her time. Our second child (8) is in the learning stages of cursive. In the beginning she would spend approximately 15 minutes to complete a worksheet, as she was still writing cursive slowly. Her penmanship has improved greatly with the daily practice and she is often finished with her worksheet in less than ten minutes.

Both students have really enjoyed the crossword puzzle reviews, word search puzzles and the coloring page posters. They also found the copywork both easy and enjoyable to use. We will complete this workbook and keep the pdf saved in our resources folder so that we can utilize specific worksheets to reinforce things we are working on in the future.

-Product review by Nancy Mayes, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, April, 2017