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Print & Cursive
- This topic has 11 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 13 years ago by
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I had a friend recently tell me that she starts her children with cursive until they’ve mastered that. Only then are they allowed to switch to using print/manuscript in copywork or any other school work. She had a lot of thoughts on why this is better for their little brains. And in the end she said everyone comments on “such neat handwriting” by her children. Thoughts on this?
Callie
I TOTALLY agree that cursive is easier from the beginning. Here are my thoughts from previous threads. BTW, ds7 has lovely penmanship already.
http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/handwriting-help#post-8721
http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/cursive-first
http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/teaching-cursive-need-program-advice#post-34829
HTH –
Christie
I agree also with doing cursive before printing. My 7yo son has quite nice cursive… although when he isn’t doing copywork (ie, he is doing something that he is thinking of what to write…) he does a print that was never taught… SIGH. I am hoping that continuing encouragement will get him doing cursive for that as well.
(I am doing Peterson Directed Handwriting, with their cursive first option.) Peterson cursive is setup so he could do a cursive print for those times he needs to think letter by letter (which I don’t want to be often….) so I’m trying to encourage that too.
Thanks for the notes ladies. In all the extra threads there were so many different options mentioned. I suppose I have some research to do now!
Callie
If you start with cursive I suppose you would want to keep copywork the same cursive font that you’re teaching? What online resources could you recommend for printing out copywork options?
Thanks!
Callie
Copy Scribe “stuff” has print and cursive all in the same books and they are currently on a mega special over at Currclick.com. 🙂
I use this site: http://www.zaner-bloser.com/educator/products/handwriting/index.aspx?id=4296
If you click the Try Now/free button a window opens that lets you choose which size lined paper to use and then you enter what you want it to say. I have a book called How To Tutor by Sam Blumenfeld and there are instructions for teaching cursive and the order in which to present the letters. I went through the book and made worksheets for the each letter or word as it popped up in the book. After we are finished with the cursive instructions I’ll use the above to make copywork selections. There are several cursive copywork selections available at currclick.com as well.
I think it’s all in what your family prefers. I just taught my 8 year old cursive this year. We waited until she mastered manuscript before moving on to cursive because that’s what worked for us. Her cursive writing is beautiful as is her manuscript. I don’t think it’s better for your child one way or the other just a preference for your family. As you can find research/arguments for both ways, just like any other teaching philosophy.
I used a program called Spell to Read and Write a couple of years ago. They recommended children begin with cursive, so I tried it with my dd. She loved it, and did well. But I find myself now showing her how to do print letters because she never had enough practice with that. It is not really a big deal, but it is just funny that she now needs more practice with print than cursive. 🙂
For my next daughter, just turned 5, we will start with print and do cursive later. We are going to do Delightful Reading and can’t wait!
I wish I had started teaching cursive first, but I didn’t know anything about doing it that way until recently. My youngest (almost 9) forms most of her letters wrong when printing, and my middle dd (almost 11) is very bad about the height of the lower case letters. Instead of trying to fix these problems I’ve decided to focus totally on cursive now. They all want to learn it anyway.
My handwriting was a hodge-podge of print and cursive. When I started reading about cursive to teach it to my girls, I decided I wanted to write it as properly as I could. One reason for it is to write faster because you aren’t lifting the pen and repositioning it as often. I realized that I was doing quite a lot of lifting in each word. So I studied how the letters were formed and it took about a month, but anytime I needed to write anything – shopping lists, daily to-do’s, etc. – I forced myself to go slowly and use proper cursive. Now my handwriting is getting prettier and it *does* seem faster.
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