Hi, Take a look at handwriting copybooks by Christopher Jarman (Nelson Thorne) or the new Handwriting series by Nelson Thorne.

Judomom, would you say one could start slowly this with a 5.5 or 6 year old? I printed out the sample last month and did the 're' prefix orally with dd and she understood it all but was unwilling to do the activities. She dislikes writing and worksheets in general. And yet, I have fallen in love with sequence in the ToC and want to start this now. I would also greatly appreciate having the hand-holding TM with the complete list of words. I have not seen any Latin-based vocab program with as comprehensive a list of words for one affix as I saw in the Dynamic Literacy sample. What would you suggest? Buy or wait? :tongue_smilie:

Also, on the Happy Scribe web site, I saw this week, that the entire set of 35 books is on sale for $8! That is an unbelievable deal, imo. If only they had the italics font. :glare:

Really? Which ones? Could you link/list them? Not that I need them; we are happy with Webster's & Word Mastery, but it does help to keep things in our resource files for later.

Hi all, Currclick.com has a Back-to-homeschool sale this month. Not all publishers are included, of course. I am thinking of buying 'Igniting Your Writing' and 'Write from Ancient History'. Do you have any must-buy suggestions, any gems that are deeply discounted currently? TIA

Hi, Just wanted to add that you may want to check out the free Spelling for Writing books or the Spelling Connections books for your son if he is willing to write a few words at a time. You may choose to have him write on the white board and save the cost of printing these activity books.

Hi, I will take a look at the youtube video Penelope suggested, but, just to share, at present, my dd either writes the words on the whiteboard or spells it out with letter tiles. She spells 10 words (or less) a day about twice or thrice a week. Last week she finished 'er' words and 'ing' words (short vowel words, not words where the 'ing' replaces the final 'e'). We haven't taught her any spelling rules yet; she just spells based on the sound.

We have not started any history yet (except picture books) but thinking ahead, I think I would skip reading aloud those paragraphs/pages and just give a gist of it orally.

Thank you so much! Now to convince my dh that this is a worthwhile purchase. :tongue_smilie: I have borrowed a book from the lib called 'The Greek and Latin Roots of English'. It is very comprehensive but (mostly) covers medical terminology. I was raving to dh last night about this method of teaching vocab (laying the groundwork for this big purchase, you may say ;)).

Thanks, Cheryl. Do I have to subscribe to the Old Schoolhouse Mag to get the discount? Can any subscriber get it, or is the coupon available in specific issues of the mag? BTW, based on the samples, the lower level looked like it was easy enough to start slowly with my 5.5yo. Would you say it is?

Oh, thank you! I will search asap :001_smile:

Hmm... Now I wish it was more popular esp. on this board, so that I could re-sell it once my sole student would be done with it.:tongue_smilie:

I agree. Swoon! If only it wasn't so expensive :-( There is no discount specially for homeschoolers that I can see. It looks like it's the same price for schools/school districts. I printed out the ToC to do it in that sequence on my own (in a small way).

Maria Miller has recommended some pre-algebra programs on her site. On these forums, I see Life of Fred, Lial's BCM and Dolciani Pre-Algebra are popular options. HTH

I don't have StartWrite 5.0 but I think you can do that by creating two textboxes side-by-side on the same line, each in a different style. You will have to leave a tiny bit of space between then, though.

There are two samples on the RR website. It looks like a neat and simple style.

There are lots of free options available on donpotter.net. My favourites are Word Mastery and Blend Phonics. Both of these are designed to help the child naturally pick up the rules. My dd's school uses Jolly Phonics, which comes from the UK. That is also good but expensive compared to printing out the above PDFs.

GuestHollow.com has free GDI alphabet practice sheets. The size is a little too small for a beginner, but you may want to try them. BTW I also second Penny Gardner's e-book, because it is not just practice sheets, but also includes instructions for forming italics letters and italics cursive joins. I just wish she had a secular version of the e-book. HTH

I found the following links in my list of free resources, but haven't looked at them yet. You may find your "gem" in these :-) Buensoft Spanish Find all these FREE programs/downloads at http://www.buensoft.com/english/download.htm It teaches through flash´em (speaking flash cards) , Match´em (classic matching memory game), Scramble´em (unscramble the words), print´em (print the phrases you have learnt), shoot´em (arcade style shooting game), hang´em (hang man, learn´em (it says the phrase in Spanish you click on the English version), type´em (practice typing and Spanish together), find´em (guess the phrase, compete with computer), quiz´em (written Quiz), snake´em (snake has to eat the correct letters in order) search´em (word search). Also a English - Spanish Dictionary literactive.com An online reading program (free) for Pre-K through1st Grade with great interactive phonics games. Learn Spanish online - www.livemocha.com BBC Languagues http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish

Oh yes, my dd used to do this too. She used to write her 4-letter name in the order fourth-third-first-second. She slowly understood that she needed to start more to the left in order to have place to write her full name in the correct order.

Hi, If your sons have good cursive handwriting, perhaps you should stay with cursive. If you do want to use italics, I would suggest showing them the difference in letter shapes (cursive v/s italic) and getting them to consistently use the italics letters in their writing. Then, introduce the italics letter joins one at a time and get them to start using each successive join in their writing. Based on my experience as a cursive writer who learned italics, it should be a smooth transition. :-) Here are the italics joins, fyi. You may see how they differ from the corresponding cursive joins. 1. tt or ft - write both letters first, then cross them together. 2. Curved Joins am um un an in im ar ir ax ix 3. Sharp Joins ai aj ap at au av aw ay ab ah ak al (curving into tall letters is optional) 4. Start-back joins no nc ne he as is 5. Horizontal joins on ox ft fr tn to th vo wi xn 6. Diagonal into Horizontal joins na ac ad ag aq 7. Joining out of an 'e' en em ev ew eo ee es ea eg ed 8. Joining out of an 'r' rn ru ro ra rs rn 9. Joining out of b, p, or s (two s are written just like cursive) 10. Letters that are never joined f z g j q y

Hi, Based only on what I have read, it seems to me that either your dd could be a Visual-Spatial learner, or this may be a developmental issue that will resolve itself within a couple of years. I cannot really help you based on any sort of experience, but only make a few suggestions. When she spells, could you tell her to spell with phonograms and not with letters? That is, when she spells CAT, ask her to spell it as kuh-a-tuh, rather than as see-ay-tee. You may also want to print/write the letters on cardpaper square tiles and ask her to pick the tiles and put them in order. Perhaps when she sees the letters on the mat, she may be able to put them in the right order (that is, assuming she is a VSL and is making a mental picture of every word.) There is a YahooGroup called 'homeschoolingcreatively' which is specifically for VSL. I have seen this issue being discussed there occasionally. They may be able to guide you more. HTH

Hi there, This is a feature of the italics handwriting style - tall letters are 1.5 times of the body height. I suppose the Getty-Dubay font from Educational Fontware has the triple guidelines setup to reflect this. This is so that gradually the child will learn to automatically size the tall letters at 1.5x the small letters. Even the descenders are shorter, if you notice. This makes it easier and faster to write in italics and helps the writer maintain proper spacing between consecutive lines, esp. when writing on unlined paper. (For instance, when writing in regular cursive, the ascenders of one line can get mixed up with the descenders of the previous line. This will not happen with italics.) If the body height seems to be too much, you may try creating the blank lines with a slightly smaller font size and see if that looks better to you visually. If it still doesn't look right to you, you may want to create the blank lines using a free handwriting font called "School Script Dashed". It is a regular cursive font, so when you create blank lines, the mid-line is in the center of the head-line and base-line. Also I would suggest you look at the Australian handwriting fonts. They are all based on italics, but the ascenders and descenders are twice the body height (similar to regular cursive). HTH :-)

I recently became a member of EnchantedLearning.com through a group buy - only $2.50 for the year. I am now considering getting a subscription for abcteach.com through the Homeschool Buyers' Co-op - it is $20 for the year. I think, of the three sites, abcteach has the most comprehensive selection of worksheets and tools. You may want to consider it instead of edhelper. Also, the latest email from the Homeschool Buyers' Co-op mentioned that they have an upcoming group buy for teacherfilebox.com as well. You may want to check that out too. HTH

Search for copywork on lulu.com and currclick.com. If you don't mind Bible-based resources, Penny Gardner's "Italics - Beautiful Handwriting for Children" is excellent value, because it includes handwriting instruction as well as copywork. Jennifer Bogart's copybooks are also very affordable. HTH