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D'Nealian or Manuscript?
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Can I get a little vote
on which of these everyone teaches their children? Please tell me why you chose it.I have been very slowly teaching my 5 yr dd the correct formation of the manuscript style using small objects to build the letters on the floor, but I am noticing she prefers the way cursive looks. I have never taught her cursive, of course, because she is still so young. She sees cursive on things around her (such as The Constitution on display at our library and on magazine covers, etc.) and is trying to imiitate the cursive letters when she doodles on her drawings.
I have shown her how to write her name in cursive and she is actually better at cursive than manuscript. Has anyone else experienced this?
I am seeking a little direction in this area since her interest is on cursive. Do I do nothing? Do I switch to D’nealian and ditch Manuscript all together? Does she need to know both? Any suggestions and experience appreciated.
TIA, Mollie
P.S. I know she needs to know a print form (manuscript, zaner bloser, d’nealian, etc) AND cursive. I was mainly asking which “non-cursive” STYLE to go with since cursive seems to come more easily to her.
I think it’s also interstesting to me that cursive matches her very feminine personality.
You could do cursive first; there are others who can speak to that better. I don’t know how you teach print after that, however.
To answer your question, definitely D’Nealian.
Many people do cursive first – and if that is the way your child is leaning, that is what I would do….
there are a few options out there
– “Cursive First”
– “Peterson Directed Handwriting” (their Cursive First option)
– Pencil Pete
I did this for my oldest – but my 2nd oldest just couldn’t seem to get the hang of it…. so we’ve switched.
For my oldest 2 (When we switched) we moved to Penny Gardner’s Italic handwriting program. For my 3rd, I am using “A New Handwriting” by Mona Bridges (the book CM recommended.) She is only a week or so into it so is only writing the letters “i, t, u, r” – but I’m pretty pleased with it.
Thank you to Rachael and Suzukimom for your input. I am thinking that I will look into doing cursive first and see how that goes with her…it’s weird to me do it first, but I am not the student and she likes cursive better. I love the flexibility of homeschool so much. 🙂
If you want to do cursive first, you may like New American Cursive. It is published by Memoria Press. We did not start with cursive first, but we do like this style.
http://www.memoriapress.com/curriculum/penmanship/new-american-cursive
You can purchase the books through Christianbook.com or RainbowResource if you prefer. The link above includes links to samples and the “why” behind the style.
I use Getty Dubay. It’s an italic form. I really like it. I chose it for the ease of switching from print to cursive. And it looks most like how I write. I was trained using manuscript (zaner-bloser) though. So I bought a workbook for me as well. I like learning and practicing along with the girls.
I have taught 2 cursive and I’m on my third. We greatly prefer cursive from the beginning. It is easier. Until the 50-60s, it was always taught first. Samuel Blumenfield has an article about this. I’ve shared at length on this board about our experiences before and I’m short on time right now, but I like Cursive First, Pencil Pete, and then copywork books (D’Nealian cursive or contemporary cursive are my choices). To meet my criteria, all lowercase letters must start on the baseline for simplicity, small lines bc large lines mean drawing and not writing. I do not care for New American Cursive by Memoria Press bc of how uppercase letters (like T, F, etc) are like print and I really dislike how they make hump letters like m and n. Of course, these are my preferences and may be different from yours.
Jennifer and jenn, thank you as well. I know eveyone is short on time, so I GREATLY appreciate the responses. I will take all these suggestions into consideration.
Missceegee, I am pretty sure I came across your previous posts that you speaking of ….once Rachel suggested learning cursive first a little earlier today, then I searched the forum for that and found your previous posts. So thank you, once again, for taking the time to re-post your comments. I hope they also help others exploring this as well.
I want to compare the UC and LC letter charts for all these suggestions, and then I will make a decision based on the style we like best. I think the Cursive First Books might be what pleases us most, but I have only began to look around.
We use Getty Dubay and the cursive is simiar to printing. Because of the way the strokes are ordered it is also much easier on the hand. My son struggled with Zane Bloser type cursive, but he has no problem with Italic, He can write for a longer period of time without complaining about his hand bothering him.
Just a little thought on New American Cursive – If you are someone researching which cursive style to use, you may want to take note of some of the uppercase letters and how they are formed. To me, they look too much like print. For example the F,T, and Z are not “fancy” enough for us. This, of course, is only my opinion and I do not wish to step on any toes…just an observation that might help someone avoid purchasing a curriculum. I do appreciate the suggestion for the New American Cursive anyway.
on which of these everyone teaches their children? Please tell me why you chose it.
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