Pros and Cons of teaching cursive first

[Country Girl]

What do you see as the pros or cons to teaching cursive first as opposed to print handwriting? Do you eventually come back and teach print?

 

Thanks!

[TracyR]

There are many pros to teaching cursive first. Actually cursive WAS taught first back in the days of old up until the time of my in laws who are in their late 60's now.

The pros would be:

Cursive lines are easier for children to form then straight ball and stick lines, and produces neater handwriting.

You can always go back and teach them how to write in print. But I'm most sure they can pick up on that after learning cursive fairly easy. I know my in laws know how to write in print and cursive so its not a matter of them never learning it because they will.

 

I know at the age of six when I switched my oldest daughter to cursive because her handwriting was just awful it actually improved (its still a work in progress but is getting much better). At the same time when she went back to print , her printing improved. So really its a win-win situation.

[SonshineLearner]

There's a little handwriting "book" called "Cursive First". It tells all the positives...with me being able to think of no negatives. You usually go back to the first way you were taught. Printing use to be taught for labeling maps. France went to printing first....such bad results that they went back to cursive.

The "Cursive First" has a very easy cursive to teach, with pages to copy. (Although for us, the cursive was too small.) I'd recommend it!

Carrie:-)

[Mom0012]

I think that with a typically developing child without fine motor skills issues, it probably doesn't matter that much. For my son, who has fine motor skills and motor planning issues, I really wish I had taught him cursive first. The main reason I wish I had started with cursive is that he has just this year gotten to the point where his printing is fluent and automatic. Now, that he is fluent in print, I'm changing everything and introducing cursive. I believe that it will take him quite a while to get to this same level with cursive, and I also think cursive is superior to print as far as avoiding reversals and being able to write longer papers more efficently and take notes. So, instead of just taking off from here, I feel like we are at ground zero again.

 

Lisa

[FO4UR]

For me, the defining factor was that my ds had fine motor delays. I decided that I was only going to put my ds through the torture of learning to write once:tongue_smilie:

 

The biggest con, for me, is that too many resources for young kids are in print. My ds will copy what he sees, so it's important for me that he sees cursive.

 

Now, at 6yo, his cursive is decent AND he can print too (with very little instruction from me btw) I think the teaching of cursive has helped in remediating his fm delays. Reversals and spacing issues have not been a problem for us, when writing in cursive, despite that my ds6 routinely reverses letters in READING PRINT.

[Caroline4kids]

My four year old is learning both with an emphasis on reading print and writng cursive. I had many issues with spacing and reversals with her older brother. Cursive was definitely neater for him. I just say that printing is what we read more and that cursive is the way we write more.:)

[bearnpurple]

We are doing R&S Penmanship 2 for dd this year in 2nd grade. It goes from print to SLANT writing and then right into cursive.....I think maybe teaching to print at a SLANT would help ease transition to cursive. My son did very well going from print to cursive but now his print is sloppier because he does cursive. I thought of starting dd on cursive but all the books she reads are in print so I don't want her confused until she is reading better. Although I can see that making circles and ovals are definitely faster and easier when they like to "draw" on all their papers! HA!

 

Not sure if this helps but thought you would like to know that we have probably all had the same questions!

[Country Girl]

Thank you all very much for the input. With my oldest son we started in K with traditional ball and stick and his handwriting really isn't very good. I am planning on starting him in cursive this next year (3rd grade) and hope we get better results with that. His younger brother will also be starting school this fall and I was thinking that maybe instead starting him with print, I'd just do cursive with both of them. I was thinking this may save me a bit of time and maybe it would be a better route to go since starting with print wasn't an overwhelming success with ds #1.

 

Thanks everyone!

[Mallory]

Since you only had plugs for cursive, I thought I'd put in one for print.

 

I think kids naturally use balls and sticks in thier own drawings, not curves and slopes.

 

I think it looks much neater for most kids then cursive, and especially neater then D'nalian.

 

Most of the things they are reading are in print, and learning to read seems more important than learning cursive.

 

We start with print. So far only my oldest has done cursive, and it wasn't a hard transition.

[Country Girl]

Thanks for giving some input on the other side. I understand what you are saying about reading print, but that isn't really an issue for us at this point since both of my boys are reading well but I can see where it might be if we were in a different situation.

 

I have to admit, I'm still having a hard time committing to cursive first just because I'm so used to print first. I'm going to continue to think about it and I still welcome input!

[Momofeat]

Since you only had plugs for cursive, I thought I'd put in one for print.

 

I think kids naturally use balls and sticks in thier own drawings, not curves and slopes.

 

I think it looks much neater for most kids then cursive, and especially neater then D'nalian.

 

Most of the things they are reading are in print, and learning to read seems more important than learning cursive.

 

We start with print. So far only my oldest has done cursive, and it wasn't a hard transition.

 

As an OG tutor for children with dyslexia, I have to say that learning to write in cursive does not make it difficult for children to learn to read print.

[rafiki]

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[hmschooling]

I'm going to teach a slanted print in K and cursive in 1st that only adds strokes without letter changes. We are going to try Italics A then go to Italics D (but there is a big jump in writing amount b/c D is for 3rd grade) OR BJU 1 then BJU 3 (or maybe BJU 2 in between since it reviews all the slant letters in the first part, then it does all the cursive letters in the 2nd part, but not with joins)...so it would be BJU 1 quickly to learn the letters, maybe 1 letter per day since he kinda has the idea already. Then go on to book 2 to fine tune the slant letters and move into cursive letters. Then in 1st, start book 3. As you can see, I'm not decided on this yet!

 

Cheerful Cursive is a good one for starting kids later than already did print of any kind. I might use that for my older dd8 going into 3rd. She did HWT cursive and it's lousy. But, her printing did improve after learning cursive. Now to fine tune the cursive. She likes big, wide loops. :glare:

 

Oh, you can download BJU's slant/precursive font so you could use that to start in precursive...you can have solid letters, dashed, and arrowed.

[kalanamak]

I tried cursive first, but went back to print. My son is simply MUCH neater in printing, and he is proud of it. He was horrified at how bad his cursive was. I thought a positive experience more important than theories on which is better to start with. :)