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How did you decide on a handwriting style?


micheliala
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I was taught in public school and went from traditional block style letters to cursive. I remember hating cursive even though I was proficient at it and had nice penmenship. To me it was always slow and laborious. I was so relieved when we were *allowed* to go back to block letters in high school. I rarely use cursive now... and it shows! How important is cursive in todays world? Will it impact my childs life in any way if I don't teach cursive? What about italics, does anyone use/like this? I saw it for the first time yesterday. Makes a bit more sense to me, more fluid and easy to read. What did you decide to use?

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I don't think writing cursive is that important, but I do think they need to be able to read it, and the easiest way to learn to read it is to write it.

 

So my oldest is learning cursive now via a basic workbook (Pentime), mostly self-taught. I won't require cursive long term. I don't know any grown man who uses cursive. Most use print or an italic-like connected print. My goal is legible handwriting.

 

I did try Getty-Dubay Italic for a while, but the changing connectors confused me, so I decided if he wants to do italic, he can do so later on his own.

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We have been using HWOT for a few years. I don't love the cursive style, but I plan to move into it when we finish the current book. The order of letter presentation is very rational and the letters build on each other as the student progresses. Plus, the materials will be familiar and are beloved around here by both my kids.

I do believe that once people have been writing in script for a few years, their handwriting "settles" into a nicer, more adult-looking script that is not always the same as what they "officially" learned. This is all theoretical, because although I sorta-kinda learned script long ago, I print in block letters at all times (comes in handy when filling in forms!). HWOT actually has helped me make my block printing more legible, and I'm hoping it will help me use script when necessary, too.

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I went to educationalfontware.com picked out a few I liked and showed them to dh. He eliminated a few and I picked out of the remainder.

 

You might give a little thought to how you want to teach it. If you are going to want them doing ready-made worksheets you will want to pick a font with that available (there are lots, but not all). OR you can decide to pick one where you can make your own worksheets. This is nice because, as in our case, we quickly ran out of time/patience to just work on handwriting for its own sake. I wanted it to do double duty as handwriting/copywork practice.

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I had a bad italic failure with my 2E son in the 90's. I needed to remediate my own handwriting a bit and started looking around. I also started doing some heavy duty tutoring of a couple left handed LD students with serious writing problems.

 

After a ton of research, trials, and discussions here, I have settled on Spalding 6th edition cursive for the lowercase letters, and manuscript for the capital letters. For sequence, I follow the instructions in How to Tutor.

 

My tutoring students make fun of my handwriting obsession. One student sometimes cries during handwriting instruction with me, but then later on cries again in happiness at her progress, and hugs me, and thanks me.

 

"Start at 2 o'clock", "go straight down", "make it the width of an o", and on and on, are my picky comments. But the students know EXACTLY what they are supposed to do and WHY a sloppy letter is wrong. I give them the TOOLS to improve. They do not have to INFER anything.

 

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My boys are using HWT for printing, but I don't like the cursive so we'll be switching to A Beka when we start that in a few months. I chose A Beka because it's similar to the way I was taught to write and it starts with kindergarten, so my 5 year old doesn't have to jump into a 3rd grade workbook.

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With my first, I used the traditional block letters, because she was only 3yo when she wanted to learn, and Kumon was the only book I could find at the time that was directed for that age. Now with my second, I have learned about the philosophy of teaching cursive first. I am convinced that it is easier for a multitude of reasons. Ds4 is doing wonderfully with it, and now I don't have to worry about teaching 2 different styles of writing.

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