Looking for a handwriting curriculum that doesnt use ball and stick

[A home for their hearts]

I need something for my ds6 who I will be teaching to write anyside Reading Reflex. I want something that isnt ball and stick and that will be easy to transistion to cursive with.

[Storm Bay]

What is ball and stick??? The best handwriting curriculum we used, IMO, was HWT for ds, who is a lefty and who found anything that used all those broken and solid lines confusing, perhaps because of some vision issues we later discovered and resolved (some of them have 4 lines). I'm not sure if it's ball and stick; it begins differently than the other method we used, which was Zaner-Bloser. Ds had no trouble going from the HWT manuscript to the cursive. However, it's not a traditional looking form of cursive.

[prairie rose]

Ball and stick is where the letter a would be formed in two strokes. First the circle (or ball) and then the pencil picked up from the paper, placed on the mid-line and then a line (or stick) pulled straight down tangent to the circle. This contrasts to most modern handwriting methods that are continuous stroke where the letter a is formed by starting a circle just below the midline and moving in a counterclockwise direction until the circle is closed and then pulling a line straight down to the base line without ever picking up the pencil until the letter is complete. Most modern handwriting curriculums are all continuous stroke.

 

We've used most of the major handwriting curricula and while I like the majority of the instruction in HWT, I detest the paper. It just didn't work for us and created many problems when they needed to transition to regular paper. My 9yo still has trouble writing on regular lined paper. She is capable of it but if not reminded she tries to write on it like HWT paper which ends up making a mess. All my older kids struggled with transitioning to regular paper after HWT so I'm opting not to use that with my younger two. I'm just teaching them how to write using HWT methods but adapting it for use with primary lined paper.

[Storm Bay]

Ball and stick is where the letter a would be formed in two strokes..

 

Thanks! Yes, the transition from one paper to another was hard with HWT, but it was also hard for my middle dd with Zaner-Bloser. I will add that at 10, ds asked to learn a more normal type of cursive, but HWT was still the best one out there for him.

[hmschooling]

We like both Getty Dubay Italics and New American Cursive. NAC is for K and up. I like to start cursive earlier than the typical 3rd grade and it's a great program. The italics is a slant style that leads into cursive well. It also doesn't use perfect circle shapes- I like that bc a lot of kids find perfect circles difficult to make when just learning to write.

I also like Bob Jones (BJU) precursive style very much.

[5LittleMonkeys]

I've been using Getty-Dubay Italics and it has been super easy to transition to their version of cursive. It really is just adding serifs to the print letters in order for them to be connected. I dislike loopy cursive for little ones because they always make their letters too round; the italics looks neat and tidy even when little ones do it.

[MyLittleBears]

The ones I know of that have continuous-stroke letter formation and are not italic are A reason for handwriting, handwriting without tears and zaner-bloser. Continuous stroke is supposed to be a lot easier transition to cursive. We've only used HWT and ARFH. I think the cursive for ARFH and ZB are much prettier than HWT. I looked into this extensively last year and these seemed to be the only choices for this particular method. I wouldn't skip out on the teacher's manual, though, they can be very helpful (except for ZB ... outrageously expensive!) I also know that Writing Road to Reading teaches something similar but of coarse it's used for handwriting, spelling and learning to read simultaneously.

 

HTHs!

Edited January 11, 2011 by MyLittleBears

[kathkath]

d'nealian

[Guest]

Italics

[Targhee]

If you want traditional cursive writing later then I would suggest D'nealian style. If you don't mind "different" looking cursize, with beautiful (and easy, fluid) print try Getty-Dubay Italics. Handwriting Without Tears does not use ball and stick either (and I like the look of it's manuscript more than D'Nealian)