Help me choose...

[JOHNNABONNA]

a handwriting /penmanship curriculum, please! What are your favorites and why ....do please tell. TIA:bigear:

[didadeewiththree]

For what ages are you thinking abt?

[Jay3fer]

We love Handwriting Without Tears. We're in our third book now - starting with the baby one, Get Ready, Get Set for School (ugh, lousy title for a homeschool family!), moving on to Letters and Numbers for Me, and now in My Printing Book. I have already bought Printing Power, and after that, we're on to cursive!

 

The font is a little strange, but it's my understanding that most kids adapt it and end up with very nice handwriting. It's designed to eliminate reversals, which were a big problem for my dd last year.

 

But the main thing we like about HWOT, and I've said this over and over on these forums, is that there's VERY LITTLE repetition. The emphasis is on doing a few examples and doing them well. I used to think, from my own childhood, that you had to do lines and lines of, say, the letter J to learn how to make it well. NOT TRUE!

 

It's better to do 5 nice J's than 100 sloppy ones where you're copying from your last one and they're getting worse and worse as they go down the line.

 

The other thing HWOT does well is that kids are never copying from their own bad examples. They'll print examples all along the line and the kids write BETWEEN them, so there are always good examples to check. On pages that have poetry or sentences to copy, the poem or sentence is RIGHT above the line the kid is writing on, so they can see it written perfectly and copy that example.

 

So - why we love it (my dd is SO proud of her writing!):

- Fixes reversals

- Not too much repetition (=twaddle-free)

- Good examples to copy from

 

I didn't buy the materials like the wooden letter shapes for the early stages by the way - too expensive. (We did receive a set of less-expensive foam letter shapes, which we used a lot) I didn't get the little chalkboard, little chalks or pencils or whatever, either, or the mat man thing they sell. Somehow, we have muddled through. :-)

[newlifemom]

I like the R&S penmanship program. Especially the cursive. My dd was struggling with the nuances of cursive. The top of the T, the little curly things on Os and such. R&S broke it down very nicely.

[JOHNNABONNA]

Thanks ladies for your help! I am needing a program for my first grader and also for my fourth grader who needs help with her cursive. I'm glad to know that you can use HWOT without all the extras. I haven't even considered that program because I thought I "had" to use them. I'm going to give it a second look now. I do like the looks of the R&S too.

[C&R]

My favorite is Italic by Getty-Dubay (Portland, OR). At first I shied away from it, and went with something more traditional looking. My oldest though wasn't making progress with Reasons for Handwriting. So I switched to Italic and LOVE it. My children no longer complain about handwriting practice, and I LOVE what it has done for their handwriting. I don't know why it has worked, but it has. I also decided that I like the legibility of a more modern look for the modern cursive that it teaches, and that it is very easy to read with eyes that are used to reading print.

[Woodland_Mom]

We used a Reason for Handwriting with very good success.

 

Initially, I chose it because I liked the look of their cursive style. You buy one main teacher guide book and it has instructions for all levels.

 

The student pages are broken into days. Each day you trace or write part of a Bible verse. On day 5, you write the verse on your own in your very best writing on a special coloring page. My kids always liked coloring the decorative boarder. We often hung up their scripture passage or sent them to grandparents for a fun way to share their work and scriptue too.

 

If you feel you need lots of instruction, then this program may not be for you. I used the TM when I first began handwriting instruction with my kids, but quickly realized that I can show them and watch them to make sure they're holding their pencil correctly and forming letters the right way.

[sagira]

My favorite is Italic by Getty-Dubay (Portland, OR). At first I shied away from it, and went with something more traditional looking. My oldest though wasn't making progress with Reasons for Handwriting. So I switched to Italic and LOVE it. My children no longer complain about handwriting practice, and I LOVE what it has done for their handwriting. I don't know why it has worked, but it has. I also decided that I like the legibility of a more modern look for the modern cursive that it teaches, and that it is very easy to read with eyes that are used to reading print.

 

I really this too. It's more of a logical way of writing IMO, and ds writes pretty well.

[Alice]

I like Handwriting Without Tears. I didn't necessarily choose it for the right reasons, mostly I just had heard a lot of people talk about it and handwriting wasn't all that important to me as far as style. I just wanted it to be neat and legible. We do it with out all the bells and whistles and my almost 8 yr old has gone from HATING handwriting with a passion as a typical kindergarten boy to having the cursive book be one of his favorite things. His handwriting isn't especially pretty but it's neat and easy to read. To me those are good results with an easy to use simple program. My 4 yr old is starting now with the basic book and it seems to be working well for him too.

[Crimson Wife]

My favorite cursive style is Peterson Directed Handwriting. However, it was a very bad "fit" for my DD so after several failed attempts to teach PDH, I switched her to Memoria Press' New American Cursive. The look of it makes me :ack2: but I was at the point where I'd take ugly but legible cursive over a pretty style that caused meltdowns in an otherwise reasonably compliant student.

[Momling]

We used HWOT and I have two kids who can print very neatly when they try. They can also be very sloppy when they don't try... but at least they know how to have good handwriting.

 

My 7 yr old is learning cursive and I should have stuck with HWOT. Instead, I was lured by the idea and early reviews of Pictures in Cursive. I regret that, but we're plowing onwards anyway. I'll switch back to HWOT when we finish.

 

My 9 yr old didn't like HWOT cursive and asked if I could find her something fancier. I chose the reproduction Spencerian books. I got 2 sets because I wanted to improve my handwriting too. I'm on book 4 and I get compliments on my writing all the time (before my scrawl looked childish). She's still on book 1, but already I can see some improvement. That said, the books can be tedious and old fashioned, so I'd only go with Spencerian if you have the sort of child who thinks that sort of thing is cool.

[Five More Minutes]

My favorite is Italic by Getty-Dubay (Portland, OR). At first I shied away from it, and went with something more traditional looking. My oldest though wasn't making progress with Reasons for Handwriting. So I switched to Italic and LOVE it. My children no longer complain about handwriting practice, and I LOVE what it has done for their handwriting. I don't know why it has worked, but it has. I also decided that I like the legibility of a more modern look for the modern cursive that it teaches, and that it is very easy to read with eyes that are used to reading print.

 

GD Italic has been enjoyed here, too.