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I been doing cheerful cursive with my 6 year old dd2 for a few weeks now, she really wanted to do it.
My child hasd been writing Chinese characters for a year before she came home, with a brush not a pencil.
These can't be messy or they are illegible. I'm amazed at how beautiful her cursive is. I also have not switched her we do both programs side by side. And she seems to have no trouble understanding they are both writing. I don't know if this is due to eating with chopsticks that develops fine motor skills early or just because of an inborn talent.

I kinda regret moving dd1 (lefty) off of cursive she did it when she was 5 but I moved her into italic thinking it would be easier for her leftyness to do.... her 5 year old cursive samples are far better than her current handwriting samples that are near illegible. Her printing l o O kslIk E th is no proper spacing etc. Her cursive is a mix of messy and large letters, but the spacing is controlled by the need to connect the letters. so at least you can puzzle it out.

One of the teachers at a local Christian school said that they teach only the child's name in cursive the first year, that may be fun for your daughter if you explain to her that she needs to solidify her manuscript first and perhaps that you will teach her name in cursive and that she will do cursive next year!

Well, I've enjoyed reading all of the posts here, and it is obvious there are differing opinions about this, which means different things probably work well for different families and their goals. I do think once you've started manuscript, it is a good idea to help dc become proficient at writing words and sentences in manuscript before moving on to cursive. Completing ARFW A (or a similar program) would cover this nicely, and of course, copywork would otherwise too. Many forms to be filled out (i.e. job applications, hospital forms, etc.) require printing and not cursive, so it's nice to be able to do fairly well with printing. Cursive is lovely, and often a preferred way of writing (often especially for women), but signing your name in cursive is really the only lifelong need for it. However, even with these thoughts in mind, there are many different paths to the final end of dc writing in both print and cursive fairly well, and we've had some excellent ideas shared here thus far.

In Christ,
Julie