Cursive and Handwriting Workbooks, how long do you use them?

[Mandylubug]

After your kids have completed a full handwriting or cursive workbook; do you make them continue to practice in workbooks or do you allow their written work be sufficient and correct their errors there? I am about to purchase my curriculum and if I purchase the next stage of workbooks for each child, that is 40 bucks :/ Can't I just instruct them on my own from now with their narrations?

 

When did you start requiring all work be written in cursive as well? After they successfully completed one workbook of cursive?

[Ellie]

I would be requiring them to use cursive in *all* their assignments, rather than continuing any actual *instruction.* I expect all children to be using cursive for everything by the time they are 8 or 9yo (depending on when cursive is taught; I learned cursive in second grade--7yo--then moved to another neightborhood and another school for third, where I "learned" it again, except it was Palmer instead of Zaner Bloser...long sad story, lol). At any rate, that would be one year of instruction, then everything in cursive from then on.

[Tita Gidge]

I do cursive in 2nd grade, unless requested to earlier (it's happened twice. Girls, go figure LOL!)

 

I do it for about two years straight, then take the wheels off and send 'em riding.

 

I don't require cursive for all work. If it were actually faster for my kids I would, but ... it's not, so I'm not gonna die on that hill every day. I, myself, prefer manuscript.

 

We average 4-5 letters or cards mailed out each month, which I expect to be done in cursive. My kids naturally compose all letters, even just notes to me about groceries, in cursive ... I suppose out of habit. If I see they're getting rusty or lazy about certain letters I just have them do a week or so of practice. Something like the Pledge or a snippet from the Gettysburgh Address or something. Same thing, every day for a week or so. That usually does the trick. If I thought a kid was way out of practice, I'd bring back a full book ... say for 5th or 6th grade if we had let it slide or something, but I'd say after a year or so of practice in books they don't NEED them. If it's a budget buster or you have better ways to spend that $40, I vote you go for it!

[boscopup]

I use a really cheap handwriting curriculum now, so I'd actually be ok with continuing it longer than absolutely necessary (Pentime is $5.50/workbook), but I likely will take it out of our day once I see that my son can write in cursive in all his school work. He's still learning cursive right now, so he'll be doing the cursive workbook another year at the very least. He's not ready to do any school work in it yet.

 

When he was in first grade and remediating his manuscript, we went through all the letter formation, then just used copywork as our "handwriting". We were doing WWE, so I made that composition/handwriting. That worked well for us. Cursive is a bit of a different beast, since it's like learning a new language for him. :tongue_smilie:

[Ewe Mama]

W get the cheap $1 cursive books when Scholastic has their dollar days. Simon just started a new one and he loves the Cursive Made Easy: Jokes and Riddles. I teach my own cursive writing style and these books most closely resemble it in style and form.

 

Other than that, we like the copy work downloads on currclick from Light Home Publications. I think that's the name. We like the selections about animals.

[MinivanMom]

I usually go through two levels of handwriting books, then we just do copywork for practice. For printing, my kids did HWT PK and K before moving to copywork. For cursive, dd9 did HWT 3 and then Queen Homeschool primer before moving to copywork. Ds7 did HWT 3 and is currently finishing HWT 4. Then he will move to copywork.

 

I personally don't think that a single cursive workbook is sufficient practice before moving to all cursive (at least not for my kids). We've done 2 cursive books and then spent some time doing cursive copywork for practice before moving to requiring all cursive. Dd9 learned cursive at the end of 1st grade, practiced it throughout 2nd grade (copywork and cursive journal writing), and then was required to do all of her writing in cursive for 3rd grade.

[Tracy]

The only workbook I ever use is WWE. I require all assignments to be in cursive from the beginning.