Robert Louis Stevenson isn’t just the famous author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped; he is also the author of many beautiful poems. A Child’s Garden of Verses is a collection of 64 poems for children, which was first published in 1885.

These interactive copywork printables from PrintNPractice are a wonderful way to introduce your child to these charming poems while helping your child improve their reading and handwriting skills. Copywork is copying, in your own handwriting, a piece of well-written work. Students copy the text onto the paper provided or in their notebooks, using their best handwriting. Not only do they practice and improve on their handwriting skills, they are also working on their spelling, punctuation and vocabulary skills. While reading these poems before and after writing, they are being introduce to poetry and are also improving their reading skills.

To use these worksheets, you will need an internet connection for payment and downloading of the files, as well as a printer and paper to print them out. Students will also need lead pencils and an eraser for completing the copywork as well as coloring pencils or markers to draw pictures. As this is a collection of poems, you will also need a folder or a binder to keep all of your child’s work in, if you want to turn their work into a book.

For $9.98, you will receive 61 different poems by Robert Louis Stevenson in a variety of formats:

• Manuscript copywork worksheets
• Cursive writing copywork worksheets
• Coloring worksheets
• Lined worksheets
• Cover Pages

There are four levels covered in this pack, which makes it great for families with children in multiple grades. The levels are:

• Level 1 – Poem with a place for the student to draw a picture
• Level 2 – Poem written on manuscript with blank lines for the student to copy the text onto
• Level 3 – Poem written on manuscript in cursive with blank lines for the student to copy the text onto using cursive
• Level 4 – Poem written on one side with plain lines on the other side for the student to copy the poem onto

I used this product with both of my children who are in different grades (6 and 4). I chose the best level for each of them and together we read through the poem. Even though our boys are able to read very well on their own, we enjoyed reading the poem together and talking about what was being portrayed by the author in each poem. Then our boys would take their time, carefully completing the copywork, making sure they were writing as neatly as they could and using the correct punctuation. After they had completed their work, they would read the poem again. Sometimes they even went as far as decorating the page with pictures that related to the poem.

We really enjoyed using A Child’s Garden of Verses and found it to be a valuable resource in our homeschool. Through completing these copywork pages, our children have been exposed to a style of writing that they haven’t had much to do with yet. Their handwriting is improving and their vocabulary is becoming richer as they are being introduced to unfamiliar words.

-Product review by Stacey Jones, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, September, 2016