How long do you wait to teach cursive?

[chepyl]

I don't really want an age, I am wondering more - how many years after your child started printing did you wait to start cursive?

 

My DS started writing letters at 18 months. He was writing grocery lists at 2.5. Writing letters to people as we dictated correct spelling to him at 3. Last year we worked a little on good penmanship. This year I am focusing on it more as we do dictation for spelling. He can have BEAUTIFUL handwriting. He starts his "e"s on the right at the bottom instead of at the middle of the loop on the left. Otherwise he makes letters correctly and efficiently.

 

He wanted to start cursive, so we did. I wrote his name and he copied it beautifully. Yesterday we learned i and t and today we ran them together. He is doing really well. He is only 6, but he has been writing for 4.5 years.

 

How long did you wait? How did the transition go? I print, I do not write cursive. I HATE cursive. I had a traumatic experience with my 5th grade teacher and cursive. Once I completed 5th grade and was no longer required to use cursive, I went back to print. I don't want to cause any problems for my son with either writing method....I would love to hear some stories of younger students learning cursive. (In PS we learned in late 3rd grade, early 4th).

[Amie]

No btdt story, but I am attempting to teach my son cursive first. However, he was not one of those interested in writing/coloring/crafts at a young age--not at all. So I'm not having to re-teach or transition anything; we are starting from scratch. My current toddler will be a different story (our refrigerator is covered in his handi-work). It sounds like handwriting is going smoothly for you and that your son will do well with it.

[regentrude]

When I went to school in Germany, we learned to write in cursive FIRST and were required to write exclusively cursive. It really was no big deal. Nowadays they teach print in 1st and cursive in 2nd grade.

 

I would recommend giving your student a real fountain pen with ink for learning cursive - the pen glides on the ink and the writing is much smoother than using ball point pens or pencils and causes much less strain on the hand. There are several models of student pens available (Pelicano and Lamy are two names).

 

My kids learned to write cursive in 3rd grade because they attended a US public school then, My son did not like it that much, but really caught on when we lived in Germany for 4th grade and he got to use a fountain pen; he has been writing everything in cursive since then.

[Dmmetler]

I started at 5 because my DD got the girls in her PS reading group (3rd graders) to show her-they were learning in class and were excited about it. So, when I pulled DD to homeschool, we just continued with cursive, even though she'd had manuscript in PS K. At 6 1/2, she has some really nice cursive, and her manuscript has improved as well, even though we don't actually teach/practice it.

 

I used HWOT cursive, since I had it, and copywork after finishing the 3rd grade cursive book.

[wapiti]

There's no reason to wait.

 

I'm a fan of cursive first - one of my kids learned cursive first and even his printing is now quite nice, especially for a kiddo who needed OT for fine motor issues.

[AngelaNYC]

With 2 of my kids I waited til they asked to learn it. It seemed to be about 3 years after they learned to print. Dd(15) was writing words at 2 1/2 and begged to learn cursive when she was 5 (after seeing me write her name on the winter clothing bag, lol). Ds started writing at about 4 and asked to learn cursive at around 7. Both kids learned quickly in under 2 weeks.

 

If they never asked, I probably would have introduced it no later than 9y/o.

[boscopup]

I'm teaching my 7 year old 2nd grader, but that's normal time. If I could go back in time, I would have taught him cursive much earlier, because he naturally started letters at the bottom, which I retrained him. Now we're doing cursive italics (his choice), which doesn't start at the bottom. He's doing well with it, but I would have preferred to have used a traditional cursive earlier. Oh well.

 

I've gone back and forth about teaching my 4 (soon to be 5) year old cursive first. He's currently able to copy most letters, but hasn't learned officially how to write them (we're going to start formal instruction on that next week). I'd like to teach him traditional cursive first, but my biggest problem is that he will get confused. He already gets confused between the way '4' is done in books and the way we write it (he wants to do it like it's in the books, and it ends up looking like a '9' :glare:). I had also started him in Webster's Syllabary on the white board with capital letters only, and switching to lowercase letters for writing was confusing him. He was fine with reading lowercase letters, and he is capable of writing them just fine, but since he had usually seen them in capital letters, he was insisting that words in ETC should be written with capital letters. So now I wish I'd started with lowercase and ignored the capitals for a while. How often do 'b' and 'd' get confused in reading anyway? :confused:

 

My current plan is to stick with print for DS2 this year, and maybe next year when he's K age, we might start cursive. In the meantime, I've been working on my cursive. I learned cursive italic this summer, and now I'm working on my traditional cursive. It's coming along nicely. I'm using it more often now, though I still don't use it for everything.

 

In school, I had to write in cursive up until middle school, and then they gave us a choice. I went with print, all caps, purple pen. :lol: I later dropped the all caps and occasionally used a blue or black pen. :D When I took the GRE though, I had to sit there and think for a while how to make a capital 'I' in cursive to write that little pledge to not cheat paragraph that they said HAD to be written in cursive. I'm so glad they weren't grading THAT part of the test! :tongue_smilie:

[LittleIzumi]

Dd was writing (self-taught) at 3 or 4, and was taught formally at 5. She requested cursive at almost 6. She writes better cursive than printing now at 6. She picked it up almost instantly.

[Tracy]

My dd starting printing at age 3. Then I found out that cursive is so much easier for them to do, so we made the transition asap, at 5yo. It took about a month, and we did it over the summer so that it was the only thing we were doing. My ds3 is now starting to show interest in writing, and he will start with cursive.

[ElizaG]

My eldest two started printing on their own at around age 3 or 4. My plan had been to do cursive first, so I made a few tries at teaching them (using Abeka, New American Cursive, Cursive First, and Montessori methods), but it never seemed to catch on at that age. They dutifully did their cursive lessons, but just kept on printing all their little stories and things. Since I wasn't teaching them how to print properly, they developed some habits of creative letter formation. :tongue_smilie:

 

With DD, I just let her do her own thing for a while (as her printing was beautiful, albeit not always done the right way), and we started again with cursive at age 6.5. She took to it readily. Her printing has become much faster as well, and has a bit of a slant. It seems as if she's finally "writing" the letters rather than drawing them.

 

With DS, I decided to go ahead and teach printing at age 5. We're just doing a quick run-through so that he learns to form each letter correctly, then we'll move on to cursive. This will probably also be at around 6.5.

 

So, while I didn't wait deliberately, it's worked out to be about 3 years. :)

[nov05mama]

Not a BTDT, but I am planning to start soon b/c he's been asking. He's been writing well for quite a while, so I figure it's natural progression to do so. He will be 6 next month, and we will likely start by January.

[Bluegoat]

We've only done cursive. I'll add printing when dd is comfortable with it.

[GypsieFamily]

I teach cursive right from the start. I don't teach them how to print. Connected cursive comes once they are comfortable with cursive letter formation. I've found they find cursive letter formation easier than print.

[Beth in SW WA]

My 4 dc used Cursive First at age 4-5 (built in to SWR). I never taught printing.

[zaichiki]

I teach them cursive as soon as they're interested. So far that has been about 6 years old for my 3 oldest kids.

 

The two oldest started printing using uppercase at about 3.5 and lowercase letters at about 4 - 5 years old... so I guess cursive seems to come about a year or two later over here.

 

If he's interested, why not teach him? There's a whole school of thought (A Beka?) about teaching cursive *before* printing, actually, so it's not so weird.

[momofCM]

When I was a teacher in Belgium, kids learned cursive in the 1st grade. That was also the time they learned to read. Print was never formally introduced. And yes, fountain pens work, unless your kid is left handed. Even though there are left handed pens out there, they really are not as efficient as the regular ones. (Ds is left handed sow e have plenty of experience)

 

My kiddos were schooled in the U.S. Dd learned to print in kindergarten and I thought her cursive in 1st grade. I did the same with ds. Neither like cursive and the use of computers doesn't exactly help either.

[Guest shannon21]

My 6yo just finished her cursive book, Writing With Prayer. She learned manuscript writing at 3yo....so 3 years between learned writing styles. I must say, her cursive is better than her manuscript! Who knew?

[justamouse]

We don't wait, we start right out with it in K. I don't teach them to print, they figure it out later on.

[Iucounu]

For an alternative point of view, from someone who's likely going to begin home schooling next year:

 

I don't ever plan to teach cursive writing. I believe it to be cumbersome, space-wasting and less neat, even at its best, than good printing. I also don't believe it to be faster, or in fact to have any actual advantages. I have tried in vain just now to find studies on relative speed of cursive, as used by a proficient person, versus proficient printing.

 

If DS6 stays in the school system, of course I will deal with whatever he is taught there, as I don't think it will be a great harm to learn, just a waste of time-- of which there are so many, one more won't matter in the grand scheme of things. :D And for what it's worth, DS6 can apparently read cursive already, although I don't know where he can have picked it up.

[Iucounu]

This is interesting and relevant:

http://www.sbac.edu/~werned/DATA/Brain%20research%20class/handwriting%20speed%20style%20legibility%20berninger.pdf

[Jill]

I don't ever plan to teach cursive writing. I believe it to be cumbersome, space-wasting and less neat, even at its best, than good printing. I also don't believe it to be faster, or in fact to have any actual advantages. I have tried in vain just now to find studies on relative speed of cursive, as used by a proficient person, versus proficient printing

 

I generally agree with you. However I'm having ds do cursive (HWOT) in English and Spanish this year partially just to keep him doing some handwriting since I have him typing spelling and stories, etc. I tell him that in the long run he will probably use a mix of print and cursive as his hand control gets better much like the study you linked to indicates. I now can understand starting a child on HWOT cursive at 5 or 6 just in terms of fine-motor skill but it never occurred to me when my ds was at that age as I don't think cursive is much of a necessary skill (beyond being able to read it) nor was I aware of HWOT. So back to the OP's original question, I think 6 sounds like a good age for cursive now, 5 if there's obvious readiness.

[Mommy22alyns]

Rebecca asked at 5, so I taught her. Sylvia is still working on perfecting her printing, so she probably won't start until 3rd grade.

[KAR120C]

DS was interested, so I taught him. I don't remember how old he was, but he hadn't perfected printing -- what I found, actually, was learning to write cursive improved his printing tremendously. He still doesn't write in cursive most of the time, but his printing has improved from the exercise!

[GingerPoppy]

Boy do I feel behind. My dd didn't learn any at school, so I started teaching her at age 9. She enjoys it well enough and it's getting quite lovely. She was doing some printing at age 3. I think I also learned cursive at age 8 or 9.

[kiana]

I didn't write cursive as a child, but during my freshman year of college I developed some serious wrist pain while taking notes. In order to alleviate the wrist pain, I switched to a more free-flowing ink and writing cursive. It helped ... the legibility to me is still high, although other people find it less legible.

[desertmum]

I am using a precursive font. This means letters have a tail which (in theory) will make transition better. Also, letter don't change so whatever ds learns that is the way it stays. Ds loves the tails.