Ball and Stick

[Peaceful Meadows]

Is anyone else irked with how the a's are written in the ball and stick method? :shifty No one writes their a's the ball and stick way so why teach that way to children? :bag I was looking at A Reason For Handwriting to use with my 8 and 10 yo for cursive and looked at the K book thinking that I might use it for my 5 yo but I am going to just have him copy me like I did with the others. :yes


(Edited to correct a grammatical error that was bothering me. Yes, I can be obsessive compulsive about some things. :O :giggle)

[Singingmom]

Yeah, it's silly. :yes It will slow them down if they continue it after they're writing fluently, so I always had them do a modified ball and stick. :)

[Bonnie]

It's one reason I went with italic.

[Peaceful Meadows]

It's one reason I went with italic.


That's one reason that I looked into italic but I am not sure what I think of the italic cursive. (One reason why my 10 yo isn't doing cursive yet.)

[Forgiven]

Cursive or printing? Uppercase or Lowercase? Is there an example to view on the internet?

[Peaceful Meadows]

Cursive or printing? Uppercase or Lowercase? Is there an example to view on the internet?


I am sorry, but I'm confused as to what you are asking. :O Are you asking for samples of Italic handwriting?

This site (http://www.drawyourworld.com/dnealian.html) shows some different handwriting samples.

[Forgiven]

You were talking about a's and I was wondering if you meant the cursive a or the lowercase a. I was wondering if you were talking about a cursive a or a printed a. You said that no one writes their a's that way and I just wanted to verify the look of an a written in the style you were talking about. All of the a's I could think of from the ball and stick method looked normal to me and I thought I was missing something.

I had to learn Zaner-Bloser and D'Nealian styles of penmanship in college-----I had to pass handwriting tests and a chalkboard test. I was taught Zaner-Bloser growing up and it was by far my favorite. The school system I worked at before I had children used D'Nealian and all of those tails in the printing drove me and the kids crazy.

[Peaceful Meadows]

I was talking about the print a that looks like this (http://watermark.currclick.com/pdf_previews/21704-sample.pdf).

[Naxi]

That's how I write my a :shrug3

[MomtoJGJ]

I dont see anything on there that looks odd to me? I write uppercase like this 'A' and lowercase like a circle with a line beside it.

[Peaceful Meadows]

The upper case looks fine but most people write the lower case like the modern manuscript in the first sample at this link (http://www.drawyourworld.com/dnealian.html) rather than the ball and stick in the manuscript sample directly below it.

Actually it's not a huge deal to me or anything. I was just wondering why it's taught when most people don't write like that after their writing progresses.

[AngelaVA]

It annoys me too, and if the actually do end up writing it that what, a often ends up looking like cl . I teach them a letter c, starting at the top of the letter and coming around and then an is "come around for a c, stick up, stick down" a d is the same except a taller stick.