Handwriting - Does anyone have a child who....

[psreit]

....does better with cursive than manuscript? DD is coming along with her manuscript, but from watching her pretend she is writing in cursive, I'm wondering if I should think about beginning cursive in the fall. That may actually be fun for her. She will be 8 in May and will be 2nd grade in the fall. I know HOD shows cursive choices in Bigger. Has anyone used a cursive program with Beyond? Any recommendations on a cursive program for a child with eye tracking issues? Dd did some work with HWT when she went to a therapist, but when she went to school for K last year, she used the 3 lines, so we discontinued HWT. It was confusing for her. She is now doing A Reason For Handwriting. Dd is doing well putting most of her manuscript letters on the lines properly. There are a few that she still has trouble placing, but overall she is doing very well. She can print very neatly as long as she is not frustrated. She still has a little trouble with spacing sometimes. She wants to spread the letters in a word too far apart or she spaces her words too closely or too far apart. That may have to do with her vision problems. Some days she does fine. Other days they are off. I'm just not sure what program to use for cursive. I think the fall would be a good time to start. Maybe we could even practice some over the summer before we start Beyond. Then it would be something fun and not just another part of school. I think it may make handwriting more exciting for her. Any suggestions?

[pjdobro]

My ds is doing much better with cursive than he did with manuscript. We have loved Cheerful Cursive here. I don't know how it would work with your dds tracking issues, but we really like it. I think you could include it with Beyond instead of with Bigger if you feel your dd is ready to start cursive. Then when you got to Bigger, you would just use the Poetry copywork or some other handwriting program.

[anointedhsmom]

My son did much better with cursive. I think you will be fine doing cursive with Beyond instead of Bigger. Like the pp said you can just require copywork to be done in cursive in Bigger or use another handwriting program if you feel the need but honestly once my son knew how to write the letters in cursive I just started requiring him to write everything in cursive and that was plenty of practice for him.

HTH!

[psreit]

Thanks for the suggestions. I probably will try cursive in the fall and, if it is too much, I can always stop it. I will check out the programs at the convention to make a decision, but if anyone has any other recommendations, feel free to reply.

[KellyB]

For whatever it is worth, I fought cursive with my first grader - she so wanted to learn, but I (dumb) felt it was important to learn manuscript. I took her to italics this year (thinking it was curvy and and calling it "pre-cursive, hoping to scratch her itch). Well mid year (she's in 2nd) we did a unit study that had cursive copying (dotted lines) and I let her go to town for the fun of it. I never did anything formal, just let her trace for fun. After 6 weeks, I took her to a cursive copywork program and we just work on letters she doesn't now through free online software, where I can type in words, letters, Bible verses and it prints them out. She has lovely cursive. I also let her pick the type of cursive....I was going to have her do the italic cursive, but she liked the more traditional better, so thats what we did, and worked well since that was the style in the unit study.

I also have a few things I got through Westvon Publishing, that work great. Hope this helps....I'd say (and I am no expert), do a little delight directed learning here and the child will either realize they aren't ready or they are and take off. Let them try with no pressure to perform. Just my 2 cents. If when I have to do it again with my young son, I'm going to at least consider a program like "cursive first".