Name: Thrive! NCHE Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-05-22T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-24T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Winston-Salem, NC

This topic has 8 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 10 months ago by cedargirl.

Viewing 9 posts - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

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June 28, 2011 at 7:56 pm
spoutygirl
Participant
I am trying to teach dd 9 cursive right now and am I need a more focused program for learning the letters. I really don’t care for the more traditional cursive fonts, and really like the look of the D Nealian and modern ones.
So I was looking in to both New American Cursive and Cheerful cursive and I really like the look of both of them, they both seem like such great programs, but I’m having. a hard time making up my mind and choosing one.
Anyone use these or have any experience with them?
Thanks!
Erica
June 28, 2011 at 8:04 pm
SueinMN
Participant
I’ve never heard of Cheerful Cursive. Where did you find that one? I believe the other one is from Memoria Press.
June 28, 2011 at 8:25 pm
AmyDB77
Participant
We use New American Cursive and the style is simple enough for my dd. She is a leftie though and while it has the binding at the top of the lesson, it is still lacking when I compare it to HWT, which we used last year. We have modified and it works. The lessons are short which makes it easy to give best effort of attention. The first workbook is mostly letter formation. Towards the end of the book are opportunities to write sentences. I bought the Startwrite software so I could utilize the font for creating customized copywork pages. Hope that helps.
June 28, 2011 at 10:05 pm
HeidiS
Participant
I love the Handwriting without tears book. My children all have notoriously poor handwriting ( inherited from their father, natch ) and the Can Do Cursive book has been awesome for helping them.
June 28, 2011 at 10:06 pm
Heather
Participant
Oh, I have to chime in on this one! Cheerful Cursive is wonderful and my 3rd grader loved it! She would often do more than one page per day, and would also pull that book out to work on before school started each day. Sometimes she took it to bed with her at night. This is a child who hates writing and has really horrid print, but her cursive is beautiful. It is a really fun program and I plan to use it for my other two when they get into third grade.
July 1, 2011 at 6:22 am
cedargirl
Participant
I LOVE Modern Manuscript (D’Nealean). It’s what my children have learned in doing the K and Grade1 levels of the Phonics Museum by Vertias Press. I also use the Startwrite Software CD to make up my own copywork and practice sheets. It’s great to be able to do up scripture, poetry, learning thier address etc… good tool. And the transition to Modern Cursive was SO easy then because they did Modern Manuscript first. Oh Yeah, and there are some beautiful free Modern Manuscript and Modern Cursive printables by Jan Brett here:
http://www.janbrett.com/activities_pages.htm
The bulletin Board Alphabet cards are amazing!
-tania
July 3, 2011 at 5:36 am
chocodog
Participant
cedargirl,
Thanks for the janbrett website it was very good. 🙂

July 5, 2011 at 6:04 pm
spoutygirl
Participant
Thanks so much ladies and sorry for the delay in responding. Awesome Jan Brett website! How come Iv’e never seen this before??
Cedargirl~Is Modern Manuscript by the Dnealian company? If so which workbooks do you use? I have one that just says DNealian on it, but it doesn’t really teach formation of letters, just throws you in there, so Iv’e shelved it for right now.
It would so help to see books side by side! It’s hard to tell from itty bitty samples whether something will work or not, and then I usually end up getting something that doesn’t work.
Thanks for ll your responses, sounds like both of these are good programs. What to choose… 🙂
July 5, 2011 at 9:12 pm
cedargirl
Participant
Spoutygirl,
If you look on the recent thread titled “printing struggles” I put up a bit of info in the last post about looking at different option on Currclick.com. Modern Manuscript also is called D’Nealian, it’s just another name the font goes by. There are a few companies that have curriculum on it. My children learned it from the Phonics Museum program we did in K & G1 (which I loved because it taught it in the track method vs. tracing dotted lines. We have since used the Evan Moore Daily Printing Practice in that font (which could easily be used to learn the font with). But search Modern Manuscript or D’Nealian on currclick or christianbook.com and you will be able to see various book samples. I know looking at something in habd is SO much better than trying to gauge it from a webpage. That frustrates me too. I also love the Startwrite software so we can make our own practice pages and copywork with. I hope this info is helpful. Have a look at the other thread too.
-tania