I have been pondering this exact same topic for a few months now and finally decided last week on what I’m going to use. It’s called A Reason for Handwriting. There are several books available. They are work books with perforated edges. It’s tracing and copywork together. The lessons are divided up by week, four lessons per week. I bought the Transition book. The first half of the book is manuscript practice with copywork (uses Bible verses for copywork); the second half is an introduction to cursive. I’m actually really excited about this resource!
I looked at HWT and a few other curricula, but when I got my hands on this one, it just seemed to be exactly what I was wanting. The style is very similar to D’Nealian cursive, with a few letters being slightly different. I think the letters are very pretty. I also like the Scriptural influence in the book. And the price was great! There’s probably more than a year’s worth of copywork and letter practice in this one book, and it was less than $16.
It doesn’t use little stories to help with letter formation like you mentioned, so maybe what you’ve got will work best for you. This is just a suggestion that I’ve never seen mentioned on this forum before. One other curriculum that I’ve seen highly recommended on here is Cheerful Cursive.
Hope that helps,
Lindsey
