Here's my situation: My youngest(4 1/2) is adamant that she "do school" and read and write ect. She is very advanced in terms of conceptually and content wise but her fine motor is not at a point where she can write a lot. She knows all of her letters and their sounds and she writes them upper and lower case (with a couple exceptions like G.) Her older sisters write in cursive and she wants to as well. After evaluating her fine motor I think that cursive might be a good idea (not picking up the pencil off the paper will not disrupt the flow.) I have printed off a few things and she has been tracing the script but I am looking for a book or lesson plan or something with directions. Any ideas?
Abeka has a wonderful cursive program in which my motor skills challenged second grader I'd doing exceptional with. (they offer cursive starting in k4.) For the teachers manual order the writing and seatwork guide.
Look into startwrite software. It's a worksheet generator and you can pick from many different popular writing fonts ( Getty Dubay Italics , Palmer cursive , D'Nealian , New American cursive etc. ) Or you could try Memoria Press New American Cursive with the cute Mr. Meerkat that follows them through each lesson. It is designed for 1st graders , Memoria Press is pro teaching cursive earlier than what's typical in public school. There is a Startwrite software I believe that has just New American Cursive to dovetail with the lessons with Mr. Meerkat. I am sure you can look it up on their website if you google Memoria Press curriculum. Good luck in figuring out what will work best !!
I'm super tired, so I won't say all that's on my mind about this... But.... My 10yo DS was doing his handwriting the other day and commented, "I love cursive. It's SO much easier than printing." And I wondered: why do we bother with printing? Or, more specifically, why do we start all kids on printing, then move to cursive? I'd venture a guess that a great number of kiddos would hate writing less if they were writing in cursive from the start. Maybe there should be a study.
We use Pentime. Great, inexpensive, and my DS really likes them. You can look at the Christian Light site or Rainbow Resources site for it.
Look into D'Nealian handwriting. I had to teach it when I student taught kindergarten. It's very similar to cursive, and easy to transition between "printing" and cursive.
I love Abeka & Pentime (using both myself), but I'd especially go with Abeka for someone that young. Their program is actually designed for K4/K5, where Pentime transitions from print to cursive halfway through the 2nd grade book. It has you writing sentences and such in 3rd, when a 4-5 year old would be happier learning letter formation, phonics, etc. with cute, colorful page. Abeka is definitely my recommendation! Look on their site to see if they'll have a display near you sometime soon. You can go see the materials in person to decide what you want. If you don't find one, I'll recommend starting with K5.
With the Abeka, if I'm just wanting the cursive, do I need a teacher's guide? I'm thinking of getting the K5 cursive for my 5 year old.
Blah. I was all set to order the A Beka stuff, until I saw that shipping would be $20, doubling the price of the order! So I found Cursive First at CBD and ordered that.
You can sometimes find Abeka stuff at used bookstores if you don't mind the first couple of weeks missing. I've bought lots of Abeka (some brand new) at Half Price Books.
I just wanted to add that I just got The Logic of English last Friday and I've started reading the intro in the teacher's manual before we begin the lessons. They encourage cursive first (which I have never done, btw). They say that cursive requires far less fine motor skills and that the muscle memory that is mastered first will last a lifetime. What I found interesting was that they say that most people in the U.S. mix print and cursive (I know that I do). They say: "The generational problems of our handwriting practices are apparent. Most people in the United States mix print and cursive. This is because writing requires highly developed muscle memory. When students are asked to switch from printing to cursive in second or third grade, they are unable to overcome the prior years of practice. Most people recognize that cursive is faster and therefore end up blending cursive and print. Another significant percentage of students revert back to printing as soon as they are allowed. These students typically found developing the fine muscle memory of printing to be very difficult. They dreaded the demands placed upon them to switch to cursive when they have barely mastered printing. As soon as they are no longer required, they revert back to printing. Since cursive is faster, it would be far better to develop the life long muscle memory for cursive and later learn to print for specialized uses such as filling out applications." They also state, "Teaching printing before cursive is one of the reasons for widespread underacheivement in handwriting, spelling, and reading." Another of their statements: "Cursive is designed for the human hand; printing was designed for the printing press." I definitely think their points are interesting and if I had a younger one I would consider teaching cursive first. My youngest is 8 and she really does not care for cursive at all...which really surprised me. She would much prefer print. If I had taught her cursive to begin with then maybe that is what she'd prefer. ETA: 9/22/12 ~ it's now a little over two weeks since I posted this. I just wanted to say that we have been using LoE and both dd and I LOVE it. She absolutely LOVES cursive now too!!
That is interesting; I know I also combine the two. But I'm not sure I agree with her comment about it being "one of the reasons for widespread underachievement in hand writing, spelling and reading". Handwriting, yes, but not spelling and reading.
There are a few statements, such as that one, that I wish they would have clarified more or wrote why they say that. ETA: They give 6 main reasons that cursive is better than print...one being letter reversals in both reading and writing. Maybe that has something to do with that statement?? I'm really not sure. Also, the very next sentence after the underacheivement sentence I quoted says, "For the reasons stated above, dyslexia and remedial reading centers around the United States recommend teaching cursive handwriting." Thinking on that statement....my ds took a remedial reading class at school last year. He is a teen and he prints. She said he would be required to write in cursive because it prevents letter reversals (I'm still trying to understand completely how that is the case). He definitely learned nice cursive last year. So, possibly someone dealing with teaching kids with reading problems would understand that statement, agree with it, and could explain it to us (but I doubt that's gonna happen).
Unfortunately we don't have a used book store anywhere near here. One church here has a used book/homeschool sale once a year, and Abeka actually puts up a table there as well. I should have ordered it then, cause then I would have got free shipping. But I wasn't sure at that point exactly what I needed, and whether or not I wanted to use it.
You can't easily reverse b/d (for example) in cursive because the strokes required to form the letters in cursive are completely different than the strokes required in manuscript. For the same reason, you can't reverse a p/q or whatever else kids commonly reverse. When using ball-and-stick letters, it's very easy to put the ball on the wrong side of the stick. D'Nealian "print" is more nearly like cursive, and so is Italic. You CAN, however, still put the letters in the wrong order in cursive, such as writing "gril" instead of "girl".
My older two boys learned the D'Nealian style way back in kinder. They have no issues with writing (other then sloppy, laziness sometimes.)
I'm still struggling with this decision too. My son is 5. I've been using HWOT. But I'm afraid like his father and myself he will have horrid handwriting. I keep thinking maybe if I teach cursive now he'll have beautiful handwriting. But I can seem to get him excited about writing at all. Also I'm still concerned he lacks the fine motor skills to write. Are you (or the experts, or whoever) saying it requires LESS fine motor to write cursive? I have Abeka K4 cursive. I'm just concerned about switching. He knows how to write all his capitals with HWOT. I was trying to push through to get to lowercase but now this has all got me thinking again....
