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Hi! Just wondered if anyone had some suggestions. My dd who is 9 can do the cursive in her Preparing assignments- but some days there is a lot of it and it takes a long time. and it drags the day on.....

Part of me wonders if I should have her to start doing keyboarding when it says to do cursive...and no she doesn't have great keyboarding skills yet ...

any thoughts on this?? just thinking about how computer driven everything is....

The year before last she was in PS and had lots of technology they used- white board, typing intro, learned how to do a power point, learned how to use clip-art...

I know Preparing looks up links...but does anyone have any suggestions on kid programs that I could use as a supplement that teach keyboarding and computer skills/technology??

thanks in advanced , carrie

I wouldn't have her type anything in unless she truly knows how to type. It would take her longer to find the letters on the keyboard than doing cursive, and it's defeating the purpose of the copywork anyway. I would just cut back a little on the assignment (like that in the Draw and Write book) or else break it into two parts. I believe Charlotte Mason's philosophy on handwriting was that quality is better than quantity. Also, when my son needs to copy his memory verse in cursive, I write it out in cursive first for him to copy. When he looks at something in print and has to "translate" it to cursive, it takes him a lot longer.

My ds was struggling so much with cursive, that we stopped doing cursive after 2 years. We do manuscript only accept his name and as soon as he finishes his typing course, I will have him type out some of his work as handwriting slows him down very much!
If in the future he wants to pick up cursive again, he may do that on his own! He can read it and I am happy with that!
Thanks to Julie for encouraging me not to worry about it, after I explained his situation!

So, perhaps you can limit the amount of cursive in a week for your dc!

I would really focus on the cursive in the Common Place book first. If the other notebooking is slowing her down too much, you could try manuscript for a while and gradually work up to doing those in cursive. The writing in Preparing is a step up from Bigger and can take a while to get used to. I wouldn't switch over to typing those just yet, not until she is fairly proficient in keyboarding. It might be nice to think about adding in a typing program on day 5 each week. I've been meaning to do this for my dc, but we haven't started on it regularly yet. Julie had recommended Typing Instructor in another post, and I am thinking about trying that one out. I have Type 2 Learn but my version doesn't work on Windows 7 which is the operating system on my dc's computer. So after looking at it, Typing Instructor for Kids looks like a great, inexpensive choice.

There are a few other ways that we are using technology around here. Last year in Preparing when we did our Medieval meal, we made a fancy menu and used one of the print programs I have. I have several different ones, I think we used Printshop or perhaps Party and Crafts creator. My dc didn't do it alone. We worked on it together picking out clip art and different fonts. We occasionally have need to do something like that, and I try to lead them along in this. I remember Julie mentioning that her boys have done similar things along the way. Sometimes the DITHOR projects lend themselves to something like this by doing a biography page or something similar. Just in household things too, we occasionally do things like this by designing special menu planners for the week (seasonal) or a Christmas letter. These are all good things to get the dc involved in and let them see how some of these programs work.

Overall though I don't know how much teaching of computer skills (except keyboarding) is really necessary. It seems as the need arises, the dc rise to the challenge easily. They have grown up using the computer to play games like Webkinz. We used Wikipedia quite a bit last year for research, and they have grown used to searching for things on google as well. It was my dh's idea for them to get ipods a while back and I have to admit that it has been really handy. Not only do my dc listen to lots of great music on them, use them as they practice violin, which was the main reason we got them, but they have become a wonderful educational tool. They have become a portable dictionary, Bible, encyclopedia, e-reader, and scientific calculator. We end up using them pretty much daily in school these days. I think all of this exposure to technology little bits at a time really gives them a confidence to be able to use any they run into in the future without having to spend a bunch of time teaching it.