McGuffey's First Reader Question

someone has put together a CM style reading curriculum similar to Delightful Reading based on McGuffey’s Primer. Don’t know if it’s the same book or not. Here’s the link:

http://www.hslaunch.com/mypage/file/3985

These look wonderful!  I love McGuffey – what a great help this site is!  Anabetica – I was able to get on her site…maybe try again?

Greetings Betty,

We are slowly working our way through the first reader with my 7 yr old daughter who struggles with reading at times. We just got to Lesson 17 and it has some of the reading done in cursive, which my daughter can’t read. What do you all do with this? Do you write it out or skip it?

McGuffey’s First Eclectic Reader Revised Edition under Preface (3.) pg.iii states “Carefully engraved script exercises are introduced for a double purpose. These should be used to teach the reading of script; and may also serve as copies in slate work.” The eclectic Manual of Methods states, “Lesson XVII and XVIII-The lessons are intended as especial drills on script. They should be written by each member of the class as well as read. This instruction applies to similar lessons throughout the book.” Here is the link for Manual of Methods online. http://www.archive.org/details/eclecticmanualof00cincrich

If she it not ready for italic cursive or other types of cursive at this stage then write it in the hand she is using for handwriting for her to copy in her notebook. Then at a seperate time introduce it to her by comparing what she wrote to the cursive in the book bit by bit. That way she is learning from what she knows to the unknown.

For informational purposes during the time they use the primers they learned print and when they used the first reader they learn cursive. I remember thinking it was the same timing Charlotte Mason introduce italic print then italic cursive but this was over nine years ago so I will have to go back and double check in her books.

How helpful is Ruth Beechick’s parent’s guide for these readers? It doesn’t sound very CMish, but maybe it would be more organic to build a reading/phonics lesson from the reading than using the reader and All About Spelling?

I will answer this question in another post.

Julie S.