Italics handwriting users - question about workbooks

[SewingMom2many]

Gosh, I'm full of questions today...:001_smile:

 

We just started with italics handwriting. If your kids print with italics, what do you do when it comes time to write in a workbook and the example print is standard? Do you print out a worksheet on your own and stick it in the workbook for them? Skip that part? I'm not sure how to handle this. :confused:

[Dana]

When we were just starting, I'd often retype or rewrite what my son was to copy using italics. I have the Educational Fontware disc and that was what I used if I typed.

[Amy Jo]

I was using Italics: Beautiful Handwriting for Children (Penny Gardener) and it had many italic examples. By the time a child finished those they would be able to copy from a book. You might check currclick and Copycat Books for some intermediate stuff.

[nansk]

Do you print out a worksheet on your own and stick it in the workbook for them?

 

Yes. I write the model out by hand (in Italics). I do this because I have just one student. If I had more, I would have used an Italic font (from Educational Fontware or using StartWrite or Jarman font) to make the models that I would then re-use for subsequent students.

 

I plan to continue providing models in Italic until my dd properly masters Italic and no longer needs them done that way.

[boscopup]

I just write the letter on the page if they need it. DS2 does ETC1, but he doesn't use the same "font" as ETC. In fact, sometimes he insists on everything being capital letters (which is age appropriate, so I'm ok with that at this stage). He's clearly not even using the models to figure out how to write the letters. :lol:

[EmilyGF]

We use WRTR as our spelling/phonics curriculum. It emphasizes knowing how to write based on a dialogue, not constant samples, so it isn't an issue for us.

 

I highly recommend this dialogue-based handwriting because it is so easy once the foundation is laid.

 

You can read about it in The Writing Road to Reading, which you can get really inexpensively from your library.

 

Emily

[Five More Minutes]

I used Educational Fontware to create a desk strip with a sample of every letter in both lower and upper case. My daughters are expected to bring it to the table along with their pencils every day.

 

If I am asking DD6 to copy a sentence that appears in traditional manuscript font, I just point out to her that the handwriting we're using makes some letter shapes differently. She refers to the desk strip for tricky letters and mostly gets them all correctly.

 

Whenever I am creating our own worksheets or copywork from scratch, I use the GD font from Educational Fontware to create it. (I tried StartWrite, but have a Mac and thus could only access the older version. It seemed way too clunky to use on a regular basis, so I splurged and got the font.)

[SewingMom2many]

I'm glad to hear this isn't really a big issue. I thought hard about him being able to read cursive when I decided to use italics, but it didn't even occur to me that all the workbooks he uses would have example print in a different font. I do have StartWrite and I'd like to use some of the fonts from Educational Fontware but it's hard to spend $50 on fonts.

 

I'm interested in reading WRTR, I just put a hold on it on our library's website.

[boscopup]

I'm glad to hear this isn't really a big issue. I thought hard about him being able to read cursive when I decided to use italics, but it didn't even occur to me that all the workbooks he uses would have example print in a different font. I do have StartWrite and I'd like to use some of the fonts from Educational Fontware but it's hard to spend $50 on fonts.

 

Startwrite will do what you need. You don't need EFI also. ;)

 

My son is learning cursive italic, but he still needs to learn to read regular cursive, so I've started putting instructions on the white board in cursive, printing out things like Aesop's Fables in cursive (using Startwrite - just copy it in from the web), etc. He's getting pretty good at it. He really just needed to learn a few "weird" letters. Funny thing is that I started this after I was saying "Are you sure you don't want to learn regular cursive?" and he said "This is easier to read." Ah, so he wants to do italic because he can already read it. So I reminded him that he WAS going to learn to read traditional cursive, and I got to work right away on that! :D

[SewingMom2many]

Glad to hear I really don't need EFI. I was just Googling a little and found a site where I can print some crosswords and other things for him using GDI font (they even have the hollow font on there which I can't seem to get working in StartWrite!) The site is here if anyone else is interested: http://www.abcteach.com/abctools_home.php

 

That's exactly what I was going to do - write tons of stuff in cursive so he learns how to read it but he can learn to write in italics cursive. He'll end up with his own style when he is older anyway but I'd like to give him a good base. Your son is exactly right about italics cursive being easier to read!!

[nansk]

You can get a subscription for ABCTeach at a 50% discount via the Homeschool Buyers' Co-op.

 

I have regularly gotten my dd to read my traditional cursive. When I was teaching her phonics, I would write out the words on the whiteboard in cursive. She caught the hang of it fairly quickly. Now, when we analyze one a sentences from our grammar workbook, I write the sentence on the white board in cursive, she adds the punctuation and capitalization to it, then she diagrams it underneath. For her WWE copywork, I write the model in Italic and she copies it.