Monday, October 17, 2011

Cursive Writing

Anyone out there still teaching cursive writing? It seems like there is some controversy over cursive handwriting instruction in public schools. Educators have some definite opinions on the topic. At our house, I think it's important to be able to read cursive and I do teach the kids to write it, but not at a young age. E13 can write in cursive but prefers to use print. R11 luvs anything artsy and frilly and cursive writing is no exception. We started in 4th grade, but it does not receive super high priority. Now in 6th she is using Draw and Write through History as a copywork source for cursive. She really enjoys it and when she really gets the hang of it I bet it will be her primary form of writing.

We have several volumes to match our studies.

This sort of shows a page view from the book.

Here's a close up of her handwriting.
We started out with more instructional practice paper from StartWrite, but now she is using wide ruled loose leaf and I think it's going reasonably well. I have used and reviewed several handwriting programs and I have not been diligent with most of them. Practice makes perfect and all of my children can write. I love to just provide the appropriate paper and we make air letters with our fingers and go for it.

8 comments:

homeschool101 said...

Yup. Our Ps schools done away with the cursive last year. I dont care whether they ban it or not, my hs children will know cursive writing. Next they will ban learning to write period because as we all know, technology is taking over. Pros and Cons. We are moving this country backwards not forwards and they wonder why kids are not learning much now. Education or Economy, both are not good atm, and going to get worse..

Unknown said...

We too practice cursive writing a couple times a week with my daughter turning print copywork from Queen Homeschool to cursive. I do not require work to be done in cursive and probably never will. With computers I think it is almost becoming a thing of the past. I will say that I haven't worked enough with teaching our 12yr old how to read cursive writing which is a little challenging when something written in a cursive font pops up.
Blessings
Diane

Becca said...

I'm teaching cursive, too. I think having good handwriting and good typing skills are both essential.

Naptime Seamstress said...

I like cursive - and so O (2nd grade) is doing some this year. We're using the Queen Homeschool's Cursive books. And we like them!

Fairly local said...

Our state has also stopped teaching cursive. Both of my girls can read cursive. My 7th grader (a lefty and very hard to teach being a righty) can write nicely. My 5th grader gets very impatient with actually writing cursive but she can read it and writes very nicely otherwise. So I am okay with it.

Kisha said...

We teach cursive here too!! My kids enjoy it more than manuscript letters so no complaints here.

Kim said...

Yes I teach it to! I'm just starting with dd9 and she loves it. As a side note, I study genealogy and most of the records are written in cursive of some form or another. If I couldn't write it, it would be awful hard to read it! LOL

Tori said...

We are using worksheetworks.com to create custom cursive writing worksheets. Last year (3rd grade) I purchased a cursive workbook and introduced the letters. It was a cheap $2 workbook. This year we are starting with tracing words. Next I plan to begin him copying the words. He struggled with handwriting from the beginning. So I am trying to make the process as painless as possible.