Prettiest Writing Program

[Coco_Clark]

I use Handwriting Without Tears because as advertised, it produces no tears...which happened at my house. But I'm dreaming of the future since my fall planning is wrapped up and my three year old already has amazing pencil control. Lets face it, HWT doesn't produce the prettiest hand. Legible, but not pretty. Does anyone have a favorite handwriting program, stylistically?

[mom2bee]

New American Cursive is by Memoria Press, if I could afford it, I would get the whole 3 level program and that CD. (I am not sure if they ever released the secular version of the level 3. That's what I was waiting for.)

I don't know if it is the prettiest because I haven't looked at too many handwriting programs, but I do like that it teaches Handwriting from the start.

[Aurelia]

Prettiest for me is Spencerian, which is the old-fashioned, flourish-y handwriting. If you want something serviceable, I like Zaner-Bloser for both manuscript and cursive. Italics (like Getty-Dubay) are pretty, and not quite as fancy as Spencerian.

[Farrar]

I actually like HWT's font, but I seem to be in the minority. But I learned with D'Nealian and I think that looks nice too.

[NASDAQ]

American cursive by Michael sull, from Spencerian.com. It's a modified Palmer. The instruction is excellent too.

 

Spencerian is nice but the whole-arm movement may not be practical.

[IrishMum]

I love Peterson Handwriting, it's what we use, though only one of my boys has really beautiful handwriting!

[CrunchyGirl]

We are using NAC. It's fairly simple and in that respect attractive. Definitely not flowery. I do like it way better than HWOT. I am hoping book 3 comes out soon as we are getting ready to move to book 2.

 

ETA: I just emailed them and I'll report back if I hear.

 

ETA: I heard right back from the author. They are working on book 3 (secular) and she said it should be ready before we are done with book 2 which we are about to start.

[xixstar]

You're making me wonder if I should give up on HWOT before we start - I think it is so ugly but I have several of the books already (thank you goodwill). I only have 1 D'Nealian resource. I was really tempted by ZB until I saw the price tag for the workbooks and decided that HWOT was already on my shelf.

[Coco_Clark]

You're making me wonder if I should give up on HWOT before we start - I think it is so ugly but I have several of the books already (thank you goodwill). I only have 1 D'Nealian resource. I was really tempted by ZB until I saw the price tag for the workbooks and decided that HWOT was already on my shelf.

 

HWOT is serviceable and legible...there's just no character to it. If you already have it, I'd keep it.

[nansk]

"Pretty" is a relative term.

I find the (British-style) cursive I learnt prettier than the American fonts on the web. Many people here find the American style pretty (because that's what they know.)

I find Italics pretty (Barchowsky is prettier than Getty-Dubay). Some people here find it blah.

 

Apart from aesthetics, you should look for a bit of practicality - what your student(s) likes and is able and willing to learn.

 

You should look at some of the available styles (like on this chart) and choose the one you (and your students) find pretty and practical.

[Coco_Clark]

That chart is very useful! Thanks.

[Incognito]

I noticed yesterday that Simply Charlotte Mason has copybooks with D'Nealian as an option - I like that font.

[Tanikit]

Personally I think any style of handwriting can be made prettier or uglier depending on how the person writes it - these days people are less pedantic when watching children write and that is what leads to "ugly" handwriting. The "prettiness" usually has to do with how even the word spacing is and also the letter spacing, whether the letters are uniform on the page and their relative sizes - it is actually a form of symmetry that causes the "prettiiness" and only after this is achieved for any handwriting styles can the styles then be compared for prettiness based on what you are referring to - if an ugly style of handwriting is more even and well spaced then a more beautiful one then the supposedly uglier one will look better.

 

I know as children we had teachers who would complain that the bumps in the m's should be more even even when the rest of the handwriting was absolutely perfect - they expected perfection and it paid off.

[chasingbutterflies]

I tried handwriting with my kids in kindergarten and 1st grade. My son INSISTED on writing from the bottom to the top. So even HWT caused tears. My son started public school in 2nd grade and they allowed him to continue writing from the bottom to the top (they said that handwriting was not taught in schools anymore as it is an archaic skill). I will be homeschooling this coming year (his 5th grade year). He STILL writes from bottom to top. I plan on "showing" him another way (the proper way), but I am not going to force the issue. I WOULD like to get a cute handwriting program for 9yr old daughter though.

[Mélie]

We used Handwriting Without Tears for printing, but I really don't like how the cursive looks. After some research, I decided to go with A Beka, because it's pretty and very close to how I learned cursive. Ds6 only started it a few weeks ago, but so far, so good!

[Momling]

Spencerian is my favorite... But Pentime is the prettiest of the modern cursive workbooks. Plus they're cheap. I think it's a Mennonite publisher, so it's got a few religious quotes and mentions themes like obedience and cheerfulness a little more often than necessary. A small price to pay for nice handwriting.

[Farrar]

"Pretty" really is subjective. Like I said, I like HWT's font, but I find Spencerian really ugly.

[momma2three]

I thought that Barchowsky Italics were the prettiest when I researched this, but I went for convenience and settled on Zaner-Bloser. I think they have the prettiest cursive.

[mamaraby]

American cursive by Michael sull, from Spencerian.com. It's a modified Palmer. The instruction is excellent too.

Spencerian is nice but the whole-arm movement may not be practical.

 

 

Oh, I'm so glad to hear that someone has used this and liked it. I was thinking about this with the additional section of instruction for my rising 3rd grader. I have to say, though, I find the ordering process a little confusing (at least as it concerns oayment by PayPal).

 

I love Peterson Handwriting, it's what we use, though only one of my boys has really beautiful handwriting!

 

 

We've used this one in the past. We didn't get all the way into cursive, though.

[WyoSylvia]

We used HWT for print but wanted a prettier cursive style. My ds and I chose SmithHand. The samples on the website don't do it justice. If you're interested in it, I would encourage you to ask for additional samples. My ds and I both love the lowercase f.

 

The merchant is very good to work with and extremely ethical. (He didn't send me samples in what he considered to be a timely manner so he just sent me the whole curriculum gratis. He then refused my request to pay for the materials.)

 

We do one letter per day and it only takes us a few minutes.

[mamamindy]

Funny, I don't really find HWoT "pretty", but my DD started with it, and her handwriting is beautiful! We always get compliments. And it really, really helped DD2 with reversals. Her handwriting is so much improved. I think DD1 easily has developed her own correct style, but I am thankful for HWoT for helping me show her how. Just our experience. She has started the cursive recently, and again, I don't find the style "pretty"... I am thinking she'll develop her own "style" once she knows how to form the letters.

[tammyw]

We are using NAC. It's fairly simple and in that respect attractive. Definitely not flowery. I do like it way better than HWOT. I am hoping book 3 comes out soon as we are getting ready to move to book 2.

 

ETA: I just emailed them and I'll report back if I hear.

 

ETA: I heard right back from the author. They are working on book 3 (secular) and she said it should be ready before we are done with book 2 which we are about to start.

 

Now you have me curious - what is NAC? Do you have a link?

[MinivanMom]

We use HWT for print and cursive, but my oldest dd didn't think that the cursive was "pretty", so she wanted to do a second cursive program. We ended up choosing the Queen Homeschool Handwriting books, which I think teach Zaner-Bloser. They are Charlotte Mason based books with beautiful photos of artwork so the cursive was very pretty, but so was the book itself. She now has a very pretty hand. It's not exactly a true Zaner-Bloser cursive, but it's definitely not HWT. She sort of found her own style.

[CrunchyGirl]

Now you have me curious - what is NAC? Do you have a link?

 

 

http://www.newamericancursive.com/index.htm

[Ecclecticmum]

I like the Zaner Bloser workbooks. I don't buy them due to the fact they are only available from them.

 

I've had and been through many handwriting programs. If I could get the actual ZB workbooks without too much problems, I may think about it, I don't like HWOT either.

 

Instead we "sort of" don't use a handwriting program. I will start using a handwriting program for cursive. Either I will use my cursive hand as the base (which is pretty similar to the Smithman link above), or I will use the Spencerian Set.

 

Right now, I just use the "closest" version of ZB on Startwrite (I think its NSW print). My daughter dictates a story to me, which I type down, and save (we do this every now and again, sometime with prompts, mostly without). Then, I use Startwrite, and do up a "book" for that story (front cover/title, "copright" page, a line or two of the story with blank space above). She then gets assigned those pages once a week (Friday-Art Day). She traces the words, and illustrates pictures for that page of the story in the blank space. In the end, it goes into a box, and after she does a couple of stories, they get proclicked and turned into book collection No 1 (or whatever number). She thinks its fun, she also gets to draw, it helps out with her reading, grammar etc, and its a nice way to display her handwriting without it being meaningless books. She works extra hard on it, because its "her story" and not something I chose, and I get to choose a style and layout that I like.

 

I only do it once a week, as she loves to do those pages, and will sit there all day doing that ;) Rest of the week she gets enough writing practice in her workbooks. PLUS, a couple of times a week, we use TV Teacher (for all 3 kids), you can find this at RR. I just plop on the DVD, give them their pages, and they go ahead doing their "handwriting". The kids love her, they don't think its school (although they all love school anyway ;) they all get to do together doing it, and I get a break for a few minutes, lol.

 

Most of the handwriting programs I have seen just annoyed me. "Let's do a whole page of J's" ....um...yes...let's....not. My daughter abhors that since ETC, and her Spunky Math likes to do that sort of thing a bit, so if I came in with another HW program that does that, I think she would just be at the end of her rope. I purchased something from R&S I think, called something like "Penmanship for Christian Handwriting". Received it, and it was gourgeous, opened it up....and gasped. It was pages and pages and pages of "repeat this letter 50 trillion times". I quickly re-routed it to the "to sell" shelf before my daughter thought I was going to torture her. Pentime (grade 1) seems like a similar thing (honestly why can't they work on maybe simple word families (helps with handwriting and spelling at same time) instead of a page of J that makes the child wither fall asleep midway through the page, or trying to rush to finish it, why not have little pictures of simple cvc word families down the page (dog-log-frog. mat-sat-cat-hat). Anyway I gave up, lol. Startwrite just makes it easier to choose the style I want and add what I want. We use imitation, and informal tracing for now.

[momma2three]

Zaner-Bloser has a really nice web app for handwriting worksheets. There's a free version and a pay version. We use it for copy work, and next year I'll use it to make spelling worksheets.

[NASDAQ]

Oh, I'm so glad to hear that someone has used this and liked it. I was thinking about this with the additional section of instruction for my rising 3rd grader. I have to say, though, I find the ordering process a little confusing (at least as it concerns oayment by PayPal).

 

I didn't end up ordering from his website for that reason. Hold on, let me find it.

 

I ordered from http://www.paperinkarts.com/

 

If he's in third grade, you won't need the promised-but-I-can't-find-it primary grades supplement. It's entirely do-able for a third grader.