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Rod and Staff Penmanship VS Horizons


my4pickles
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I need some help deciding on which one to buy for my sons. They will be in 4th and 7th, but have been in public school. Sadly my 7th grader was never taught cursive at all. My other son was taught some this past year. So I need to start out on the basic level. I had thought about purchasing Horizons grade 3 penmanship then I found out R&S makes one also. So if anyone has used either one, please let me know.

Thank you!

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I have not used either but bumping for you.

 

You could also do a google search for free handwriting printables. You can find them in any style you prefer. You might want to use the same style they are already used to using. I don't know if it matters or not though.

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R&S is a tradtional cursive. It is taught similarly to the way Zaner Bloser teaches, by first introducing and practicing strokes, and then putting them together to form letters.

 

Cursive is introduced in the second grade book, along with something useless called "slant writing." Blech. You could start with the second grade book and just skip the slant writing. :-)

 

I'd go ahead and get the teacher guides. They aren't expensive, and they provide suggestions for evaluating the dc's penmanship and extra practice and whatnot. Get the extra writing paper, too; your dc will need more practice than just what's in the lesson, and it will help if they have the writing paper. You'l want to move away from the writing paper eventually, but it doesn't hurt to use it in the beginning.

 

Also, tear out the pages from the student workbooks so that your dc can lay their papers flat on a writing surface. This is much easier than trying to wrestle the opposite side of the page they're writing on; and if your dc tend not to slant their papers correctly, you can tape the paper to the desk/table so they can't move it. Ask me how I know this. :D

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We tried R&S Penmanship, since we use and love a lot of their other materials, but the penmanship left my hard-working ds in tears day after day. There was simply too much practice on each page and excessive practice on strokes. We had used Zaner-Bloser for manuscript, so we went back to it for cursive and it was like a breath of fresh air. We'll be doing the 4th grade book next year to help with fluency, but with just doing the 3rd grade cursive book last year, my ds has beautiful cursive handwriting. I'd highly recommend checking out ZB.

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