cursive and print copywork for 1st grader?

I have had my daughter continue to do print copywork while she has been learning cursive this year, mostly because I didn’t want her to lose out on the grammar/spelling/mechanics benefits of copying full sentences while she was learning cursive letter formation. However, she is now getting pretty close to where it is not asking too much of her to write a full sentence in cursive neatly, in which case I will eliminate the print copywork and just start having her do all her copywork in cursive. So…if your daughter learns cursive in school this year, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t just have her do cursive copywork next summer and ‘kill two birds’ with one stone.

HTH some,

Jen

I used New American Cursive 1 (I bought it from Rainbow Resource – think it’s published by Memoria Press though.). It was a simple workbook and we spent no longer than 5 minutes per day on this – perhaps doing one or two lines. Sometimes we alternated – I’d write a letter and then she would. Super simple and painless. I chose NAC because I liked the font, but really you can use any cursive workbook with a style you like. For her print copywork, she usually copies one longer or two shorter sentences, which takes her perhaps 5-8 minutes. Copywork she does during a block of independent time, cursive she and I have done together, so they aren’t scheduled right next to each other. She is almost done with the workbook now, so I will probably start transitioning her to cursive copywork soon (we’ll drop the print copywork). We’ll go back to 1 shorter sentence to start with and then build back up from there as she gets more confident and fluent with cursive.

HTH some,

Jen