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I have a first and second grader. We just started doing BLHFHG together. I think they would love to begin Creative Cursive. Is this something that is included in the next curriculum guide? If so, should we wait and do it next year? Just curious. THanks, Bridget

I think cursive practice is scheduled into Bigger.... so you could just wait and do it then. But if your kiddos are ready, I don't think it would hurt anything to go ahead and do it. You could just skip that box when you get to it when you get to Bigger.... But maybe someone with older kiddos could give you a little more concrete advice.

Bigger includes cursive practice with "Cheerful Cursive" (which is a great cursive program, imo) or the itlaic book of cursive.
My 10 yr old uses cheerful cursive, but my 8 yr old doesn't. He's not ready for cursive, so we use italics (but a different book then scheduled) because that's what works for him.
I would say you could certainly try it; if they don't like it or it doesn't work, put it away for a little bit!

Hi Bridget!

Welcome to HOD! I haven't used Beyond yet, but I'm doing Bigger with my 8 yo son this year. We're using Cheerful Cursive and I LOVE this book! It gives nice slow, steady practice for writing cursive. My son's handwriting actually looks really good...and handwriting isn't a strong thing for him. It is scheduled in Bigger, but you would not mess anything up to do it now if you wanted to. You could just take it a page a day (except for the pages with 2 columns of words where it's scheduled one column for the day). When we started Bigger this year, I didn't have Grant do any copywork of poetry. Now that we're into the year a ways, I have him copy 2 lines of the poem we're studying (printing), and we don't worry about finishing the poem in a week. I'm saying this, because you may wish to skip the copywork scheduled in Beyond and do Cheerful Cursive instead if your child isn't an "eager writer". Next year you could just have your child do the poetry copywork in cursive in Bigger.

I don't know if you were just asking about your 8 yo or your 6 yo as well. I think you'd want to make sure the 6 yo had a good handle on printing before learning cursive. (At least that's my opinion...I know some programs start kids out writing in cursive...so it's probably a matter of preference.)

Kathleen

Thanks guys for the advice about the cursive! Now that i know it is scheduled in Bigger, i may just wait and let them continue with the copywork for now! This was my first time to use the board about a question and i really appreciate hearing your thoughts!