teaching cursive – need program advice

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  • March 25, 2011 at 9:52 pm
    Rebekahy
    Participant

    Time to learn cursive.  This is what I need, a cursive program that does NOT have a separate teacher’s manual and student book.  I need to be able to open up her book and go.  I’d like one that starts with JUST strokes.  The only subject I EVER got a C in was penmanship – boo!  So now I have to try to teach it and my cursive is well – eclectic to say the least – it’s kinda pretty, but a mishmosh of print and cursive depending on what looks better (Cursive capital g’s are so fat and ugly – I much prefer enlarging a lower case cursive G instead – so while I’m hopeless – hubby wants my girls to write beautifully).  And the rub is… my girls pretty much taught themselves to print, so while their print is nice, I’m certain they don’t form all of their letters the “correct” way.  Is there hope for us???

    March 26, 2011 at 1:36 am
    lgeurink
    Member

    I found a Handwriting without tears book brand new at our thrift store for a quarter.  I think it is ten dollars new but I am not sure.  My 8yo dd just finished it last month, she started in Sept.  She did it almost completely on her own, I just watched her at the very beginning of each new letter and checked her page when she was done.  She totally taught herself.  Her printing leaves something to be desired, but she picked up cursive quickly, enjoyed it, and it is much nicer looking than her printing.  Now I make her copywork up in cursive.  The only bummer now is that I have to consult her book while I am writing out her copywork so I get the strokes correct!  It worked perfectly for us, maybe you could find a sample online?  I think they sell the books in teacher stores so you could look at them there too.

    March 26, 2011 at 3:45 am
    teachermom
    Participant

    I’ll have to pull out our book and look, but I am pretty sure New Ameican Cursive starts with just strokes.  We used it awhile ago.  It worked really well for us and is open and go.  I really like the simplified strokes and I’ve just taught my daughter how to read the more traditional cursive “F”, “Q”, “T” or “Z” so she can read those letters as needed in the future (or decide to use them if she’d like to……so far, she likes the letters as we’ve learned them through NAC the best). 

    http://www.newamericancursive.com/index.htm

    -Kim

    (ETA:  We used the first book only and then I decided to buy the StartWrite CD with the NAC font to make copywork.  I have found that to be VERY helpful.)

    March 28, 2011 at 11:20 pm
    Rebekahy
    Participant

    Kim – if you could check to see if it starts with individual strokes that’d be great, from what I was able to see of the previews it didn’t appear to start with strokes, but whole letters. 

    Thanks for the suggestion of HWT I have their books for printing, but I’m not as crazy about their cursive… but I guess beggars can’t be choosers.  sigh.

    March 29, 2011 at 12:33 am
    Rachel White
    Participant

    Have you looked at A Reason for Handwriting? It uses the Zaner-Bloser style.

    Rachel

    March 29, 2011 at 12:39 am
    missceegee
    Participant

    I have successfully used Cursive First and Pencil Pete. I highly recommend both. My dd10 and ds7 have lovely penmanship. Here is a previous thread on this topic – http://simplycharlottemason.com/scmforum/topic/cursive-first

    HTH,

    Christie

    March 29, 2011 at 3:35 am
    Rebekahy
    Participant

    So is Pencil Pete a stand alone program?  Does it go step by step?  Can I print out a year’s worth of material and just go?  That’s looking like an easy option…

    March 29, 2011 at 4:19 am
    Sue
    Participant

    We have used HWT for cursive this year and last because I was given two of the cursive books and two manuscript books three years ago…..so I used what I had on hand!  It has worked okay in that my daughters have been able to learn cursive without much help from me (other than checking their work and making a few suggestions for extra practice).  However, my oldest daughter actually prefers to do her copywork now in Zaner-Bloser style.

    If you can find what you need in ZB style, I’d go with it.  On their website, they offer a free program that lets you type in your copywork and print it out for your child.  It’s nice because you don’t have to write everything out by hand.

    Sue

    March 29, 2011 at 12:59 pm
    missceegee
    Participant

    Pencil Pete is wonderful. It’s a small pencil that pops up and shows how to form every letter over and over again until you choose a different letter. You can print worksheets for the letters with it, which I did, but the lines are too large. I prefer making the worksheets with Startwrite (or you could use the free ZB site above). Don’t make the mistake of using too large of lines, it’s actually harder to write neatly. 

    With Pencil Pete it does show you step by step how to form each letter and it also starts all lowercase letters at the baseline – two things that were important to me. It is very similar to ZB in appearance and I preferred that to the upright HWT style.

    HTH,

    Christie

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