Another handwriting poll: Print or Cursive first?

[AnointedHsMom]

I'm trying to decide what to do with my youngest son regarding handwriting. In many ways I wish I had done cursive first with my older son and had planned to start with cursive for the just turned 5 year old. I'm just not sure now.

 

What did you start with first? Print or cursive? What is/was your experience and what do you wish you had done differently in hind sight? What curriculum did you use? Do you wish you had used a different curriculum and if so why?

 

Thanks everyone!

[nansk]

Cursive. There is no need to teach printing. An adult who needs to print can easily do it without having been taught. I was taught to write in cursive and I write uppercase print when filling forms.

[kalanamak]

Other. I would go with what the child can do. My son could not do cursive at 5 or 6, but he could print better than his age average. It was one of his little points of pride, and I wouldn't have dreamed of taking it away from him.

[Dinsfamily]

I started my ds with manuscript but switched to cursive at the beginning of 1st grade after he begged to "write fancy." His writing improved immediately. He no longer has to think about where the letters start or letter vs. word spacing. After seeing how well cursive went this year, I'll be starting my other dc with cursive from the get-go.

[min]

I haven't voted, because we're afterschoolers, but here (in my corner of Australia) children don't learn to print any more. They learn cursive letters from the start, but they don't join it all up until about grade 3 or so.

 

Min

[nansk]

..I would go with what the child can do..

 

I agree, of course! I replied under the assumption that the cursive v/s print decision was at the mom's discretion. :)

[nansk]

..here (in my corner of Australia) children don't learn to print any more. They learn cursive letters from the start, but they don't join it all up until about grade 3 or so.

 

:thumbup1:

I was happy to see that the Oz states have adopted a form of joined-up writing very similar to Italics. There is lots of support (books, web sites, fonts) for teachers too.

[Dmmetler]

I think it depends on how the child is doing with reading. If the child is already struggling with reading, I can see real benefits in not adding another form of written language at the same time. For my DD, who was an early reader, I wish I'd started cursive first. As it stands, we're still doing it pretty early-she learned print in ps K last year, but we started cursive this year, but she tends to revert to print, even though she has much better cursive than print.

[BatmansWife]

I guess I'm old school. We do print first.

[AnointedHsMom]

Just bumping this up so more people might vote and comment.

[MinivanMom]

We do print first. I think it's important to form print letters with the correct strokes in the correct order, so I wasn't willing to assume that my kids would just pick it up correctly without instruction. My oldest just finished learning cursive, but we'll probably do another year of cursive copywork before I start requiring her to do all of her writing in cursive.

[BlsdMama]

Can I vote for neither?

 

I taught my first two print and then cursive.

 

My next two are learning italics and then will just join. Happy sigh. I'm loving it!

[FO4UR]

I started with cursive. We went slow and steady, learning the strokes before ever putting it on paper. He picked up print naturally on his own, but had major reversal problems. Cursive was much easier for him to learn first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I guess I'm old school. We do print first.

 

LOL...print first is a rather new trend in the grand scheme of things..My grandparents learned cursive first, for ex.

[RahRah]

I've been working on DS6's handwriting lately because his form is sloppy - he starts at the bottom a lot, tends to do loops counter-clockwise, and the letters can sometimes be differing sizes ... this is all print.

 

The other night, he asked me what his name looks like in the, as he calls it, 'fancy' writing? So I wrote his name in cursive on a piece of paper.

 

:w00t: he wrote it exactly as I had....perfectly....first attempt :w00t:

 

I asked him to do it again - he did. Again - he did.

 

I decided I'm switching him to cursive - just waiting for the HWT book to arrive now!!!

[teachmejoy]

I did a lot of research about this before teaching my ds. I wanted to do it because of my training as an educational therapist. We did cursive exclusively. I looked at all the programs and finally settled on Cursive First. I really liked most of the concepts, but I wasn't thrilled with the written letters and such, so I developed my own! :) It's made of all the ideas that I most like about handwriting. You can find the link in my signature. It's called Joy of Handwriting. My DS is almost 7 now and has beautiful handwriting! He's a lefty, too.

[Tracy]

I started with manuscript when dd was 3yo, because I didn't know any differently. We transitioned to cursive last summer when she was 5yo after I learned about the cursive first philosophy. Even though I didn't teach cursive to her first, I determined that it was important for us to make the transition as early as possible. It made sense to me that cursive is easier for a little one to write. It also made sense that if you wait until the traditional 2nd-3rd grade, you are making this transition right at the time when you are ramping up in other areas, as well. So it seemed wise to make the transition early.

 

I did give dd some say in it. While I decided that we would make the transition, she chose to do it over the summer rather than wait until the beginning of the school year. I am really glad that we did that, because we could focus on that, and it always got done, and never at the exclusion of anything else. It was a little frustrating for her, because she thought she already knew how to write. Also, the program we used (Cursive First) did not give her enough opportunities to write real words, phrases and sentences, so that was a source of frustration, as well. But in spite of the frustrations, it only took about a month at 5 minutes per day. And her cursive writing is way better than her manuscript, so I still count it a successful endeavor. And we will most definitely do cursive first with ds when he is ready. But I will not use a program. I will just make my own sheets.

[AnointedHsMom]

Thanks everyone. I'm honestly still undecided but I've got our local convention in May and I hope I'll be able to decide after that. I'm going to spend some time looking at things there.

 

Thanks again!

[Whereneverever]

Cursive, and I use Cursive First.

[CanaryMelody]

I taught print first with my oldest. I wished I would have taught cursive first instead. She always reverts back to print and didn't make an easy transition of it. My youngest three will be taught cursive first.

[SonshineLearner]

I guess I'm old school. We do print first.

 

But :D If you were really "old school" you'd do cursive ;)

[krismoose]

I liked the ideas behind using cursive first, so I did that with my ds when he was almost 5 and not really writing much of anything on his own. Two years later, he can copy sentences fairly well in cursive, and has taught himself to print with minimal assistance from me. I have him do a page from a word puzzle book a couple times a week to practice the printing, but he does his spelling in cursive. Dd4 started copying words (in print) from books etc at 3yo, so I taught her the correct formation of the letters in print first - she loved the ETC primer books! I just started cursive with her using A Beka's K4 Writing with Phonics book. I re-ordered the letter pages to correspond with the Cursive First sequence, added a stroke to some of the letters so that they all start on the baseline, and spiral-bound it. She loves it! We'll see what happens with dd1...:)

Edited April 30, 2011 by krismoose

[joysworld]

My oldest two learned print on their own, so that is what I went with, however, I never taught handwriting formally. I just corrected their hand writing as they write for different areas of school. For formal handwriting lessons though, I would do cursive, because I do print on my own and informally.

 

Off topic, but I don't understand why it's a big deal of children print starting at the bottom? Can someone explain that to me? As long as my son can write legibly, I don't worry about it. Is there a reason why I should?

Edited April 30, 2011 by joysworld

[BatmansWife]

LOL...print first is a rather new trend in the grand scheme of things..My grandparents learned cursive first, for ex.

 

But :D If you were really "old school" you'd do cursive ;)

 

 

:lol: Well, I guess I'm not THAT old school then. I'm in my 40's (old school to me) and we learned to print first. I guess I just stuck with that. :001_smile: