From Printing to Cursive First ?

[Rockflower]

Hello Everyone,

I am new here and have a question. I hope someone can help. My 5 year old daughter has been printing for about a year and a half now. We just discovered Spell to Write and Read and want to start that next month. I am not sure if I should just start teaching her Cursive writing first and after she is comfortable with it begin the SWR Lessons or if I should let her begin the spelling lessons (printing the words) and teach the cursive writing along with it; then when she is comfortable with the cursive writing have her stop printing and go from there. I hope this makes sense. Anyone have any advice.

 

Thanks so much,

Linda S.:confused:

[Beth in SW WA]

Hello Everyone,

I am new here and have a question. I hope someone can help. My 5 year old daughter has been printing for about a year and a half now. We just discovered Spell to Write and Read and want to start that next month. I am not sure if I should just start teaching her Cursive writing first and after she is comfortable with it begin the SWR Lessons or if I should let her begin the spelling lessons (printing the words) and teach the cursive writing along with it; then when she is comfortable with the cursive writing have her stop printing and go from there. I hope this makes sense. Anyone have any advice.

 

Thanks so much,

Linda S.:confused:

 

My girls learned Cursive First as they began SWR. It was seamless. Just have her begin CF and make cursive copy work of the spellings lists. We use Startwrite for this purpose -- but you could just write her spelling lists in cursive on paper for her to trace every day. (We write our SWR words daily.)

 

My girls never had a formal printing program. We started right with cursive.

[sibbis]

Perfect timing! My 5 1/2 year old is very interested in learning cursive. He prints decently for a 5 year old but is really keyed into this cursive thing. So I've been looking at Cursive First myself. My 8 year is getting ready to learn cursive anyway (which I know now is backwards but I just learned about doing cursive from the beginning!). After reading the research I'm convinced and I think I'm going to go for it!

[EmeraldGirl]

My kids were adopted and are ELL, so when we started with SWR, we went right from the beginning w/ CF, following the method they suggest of teaching along with the phonogram cards. It worked very well. We used sand/saltbox, white board, drawing on my back, and then the notebook paper. My kids really enjoy SWR and it is worth the initial work involved to get started.

[Rockflower]

Thank you everyone for your replay. It has been very helpful.:grouphug:

Linda

[FO4UR]

I vote for teaching the cursive letters as an intro to SWR. Take that time while you are learning cursive to solidify letter sounds (esp letters that make more than one sound). My reasoning is that it's easier for me to say that dc can print on their own time (or in other subjects), but we use cursive in SWR. If you are using SWR to get a pre-reader off the ground, you might not want to wait on cursive. No harm done in starting in print (or letter tiles ;)) and using cursive later....when you start back at Section A in 1st grade might be a good goal to work for.

[Rockflower]

Thank you 3blessingsmom, my husband and I were discussing this very thing.

 

My daughter is a reader (1st grade level) and we have done some spelling last year at the end of the year. Anyway, he thinks we should consider SWR cursive only and spend the beginning of the year concentrating on cursive writing, phonograms and spelling rules... then introduce the journal when she is a bit more comfortable with cursive writing. I do not have the Cursive First book so I do not know what they suggest. It should arrive shortly.

 

Thank you for your help. :001_smile:

Linda

[SnegurochkaL]

When my daughter was 6 I started SWR program with her. She didn't print before writing in cursive. We used salt box and sandpaper cards which I purchased. It was a great help for us. My daughter's small motor skills were not that good that is why I didn't start the program earlier. Tracing/ drawing letters using a salt box helped a lot. She prints answers to crossword puzzles but do most of her writing in cursive.

[Dinsfamily]

Thank you 3blessingsmom, my husband and I were discussing this very thing.

 

My daughter is a reader (1st grade level) and we have done some spelling last year at the end of the year. Anyway, he thinks we should consider SWR cursive only and spend the beginning of the year concentrating on cursive writing, phonograms and spelling rules... then introduce the journal when she is a bit more comfortable with cursive writing. I do not have the Cursive First book so I do not know what they suggest. It should arrive shortly.

 

Thank you for your help. :001_smile:

Linda

 

I did one year (K) of SWR with my ds in print before starting with cursive first. To transition to cursive, we learned all of the cursive letter formation and then reviewed the phonograms in cursive before starting our spelling lists for the year. It was a good transition for us. Like you, I wasn't sure the best way to go about it, but I'm glad we ended up doing everything in cursive instead of starting the lists printing.

[lettucepatchkids]

Jumping in kind of late here :001_smile:

I also have a rising 1st grader (6 year old) and we started (lightly through a coop) with SWR this past Feb and plan to continue it on (at home too) this fall. Her printing is pretty good, but I wonder if I should start with cursive first since it goes hand in hand with SWR.

For those who have made the transition was it hard? I don't want to frustrate DD w/ re-learning handwriting.

 

Also :blush: what is the benefit of teaching cursive first? (or teaching cursive at all)