Teaching cursive

[kiloyd]

When do you teach cursive? A Beka suggests cursive first as in kindergarten.

What do you know or what have you done? And is it any difference for boys or girls?

[Sara]

I think I'm going to teach it this year for 2nd grade. Dd was using Bob Jones at the Christian school and while I'm not using anything else from Bob Jones, I do think that I will use their 2nd grade handwriting. I believe it starts out the year with transitional cursive and then moves into cursive at some point.

I don't know anything else about when it should be taught. I just know that dd is very interested in learning to write cursive. That is the main reason we are doing it this year instead of waiting until 3rd. I know some programs teach cursive much earlier. I don't think dd would have been quite ready last year, though.

[This Busy Mom]

Boys in general develop fine motor skills later. I haven't worried too much about it, and my ds has always done Zaner-Bloser (he did their workbooks in ps and liked them :shrug ). I picked up A Reason for Handwriting for him this year because they are very similar, but A Reason for Handwriting has verses for copywork.

I didn't realize it, but the phonics/spelling program I am going to be using with my dd this year teaches cursive from the get-go. They use a program called Cursive First and it has a lot of ideas about using larger manipulatives, a sand "box", sand letters, and such to teach them their letters. I saw a video of it in action, and it was great. From what I'm getting out of it, you don't want to start their handwriting experience with tracing if they are young (4 or 5), but just use the large motor activities to teach them.
here's a description: https://www.morningstarlearning.com/displayProductDocument.hg?productId=11&categoryId=2
and a review: http://www.homeschoolchristian.com/Reviews/CursiveFirst.html

My sil told me that Abeka wants to start out with cursive. If it involves tracing... I don't think it would be as effective as the above.

[Shining Light]

I started Cursive First (the program mentioned by Wake Me Up) with my 5 1/2 year old dd today!! We're both excited that she is going to learn "fancy" writing and so far she is doing well. Here is an interesting read with rationale for teaching cursive first: http://swrtraining.screwlewse.com/id29.html One of the things I thought was interesting is that they claim that cursive is actually easier, fine motor skill wise, than manuscript for children to learn. To me, it actually makes sense. I also think the following argument makes a lot of sense: "[Cursive] helps the child learn to spell correctly since the hand acquires knowledge of spelling patterns through repeated hand movements. This is the same phenomenon that occurs when pianists or typists learn patterns of hand movements through continued repetition” (Blumenfeld, 1997)."

In any case, no matter whether you do manuscript or cursive first, I think that what Wake Me Up was saying about starting with the large motor activities first is absolutely key.