Hello, today I want to tell you about our cursive handwriting practice. When we first started, Little V practiced a letter a day, using the
A-Z Cursive HandwritingWorksheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler. You can download them for free at her Printables section. These were colorful worksheets, that I printed and put them in a binder special for Handwriting Practice, which includes also the A-Z Handwriting manuscript version and numbers.
To save paper and ink, I printed only one copy of each letter and placed each copy inside a page protector, and Little V used those thin expo markers to trace the letters.
Then, while searching online for a Cursive Handwriting Curriculum I found more worksheets, also available for download for free at another cool website -
K5learning. These new worksheets I can print in black and white and, somehow I just feel that this way she has a better feeling while practicing directly on the paper, a little more costly, but you can print in the front and back of the paper (saves a little paper). These worksheets allow her to practice the capital and lower case letter just like the ones from Confessions of a Homeschooler but she can also have a feeling of how to write words in cursive. There are also worksheets that are all about words, which we haven't use them yet, since I want her to have a good practice and feel confident about doing the letters first.
A short video of what we are doing:
Now. since there is so much debate regarding teaching or not to teach cursive handwriting, and giving that cursive writing is not required by the National Common Core Standards, why did I chose to add this to Little V curriculum? I will then add a few reasons why I personally think it's important.
1) I learned cursive while I was in school before I learned manuscript.
2) I think it's beautiful to write in cursive, therefore I want my daughter to learn it.
3) How will your child have his or her unique signature later in life, if he or she won't learn cursive?
I do a lot of online research and I found many reasons that I think are true to why teaching cursive handwriting is important and below it's one reason I read and totally agree:
3) "There is even a movement afoot among some reading experts to begin teaching cursive before block printing, as they have found that the connections between letters required in cursive writing may reduce letter reversals. - See more at: http://www.washingtonparent.com/articles/1212/cursive-writing.php#sthash.LesbbSmK.dpuf
This alone, is a great reason since it's practically impossible for a kid to mix up "b" and "d" with cursive handwriting. I had this problem with Little V and worked on it, today she's fine and since we started the cursive handwriting I noticed she no longer hesitate before writing "b" or "d".
Again, just as a reminder, I 'm just sharing what I think and what we do in our homeschooling. Ultimately, the parents are the ones who have to make their own decision based on how they feel and on the researches they do.
Hope you enjoyed our post. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below or contact me through the contact form. I'll answer as soon as possible.
Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!
Vanessa Z. Pawlicki