Learning to Print

[arliemaria]

My son is 4.  I truly do not want to push academics, but am very curious about the order in which I should introduce printing.  Handwriting without Tears introduces capital writing first.  Perhaps this is easier on children.  As for learning to read I've read that you should make sure children learn to read all lower case letters first because over 90% of text is lower case.  That makes a lot of sense to me.  If that is true, learning capital printing is much less important than learning to print lower case.  

I would like to introduce cursive as earl`y as I feel they are ready, but do want to make sure they learn to print beautifully as well.

 

I would love to hear your thoughts.

[Tanikit]

I taught my DD small letters first at 4 years of age and then capitals later - the capitals were very easy to teach having done the more difficult letters first. I have not started cursive yet. I felt like you do that the small letters would be more important and it has also prevented the problems many children have of writing in capitals spread throughout their writing - she knows where capitals are expected and puts them there.

 

That has been my experience but there are pros and cons to each method. At 4 I did not use any lines to teach writing and my DD started writing very large and gradually decreased the print size. She started writing in lines a few months after turning 5 and is managing fine. I think you also have to make sure your expectations are reasonable for your own child's fine motor control.

[MinivanMom]

I teach capital letter first, because they are physically easier for small children to write and have simpler strokes. I have always taught my children how to write all the capital letters and then all the lower-case letters prior to starting phonics instruction, so reading is a non-issue.

 

I like to wait until a child is printing fairly neatly before starting cursive. So far that has been late 1st grade (for dd9) and early 2nd grade (for ds7).

[Hunter]

I teach uppercase manuscript and lowercase cursive. There are pros and cons to all approaches. And the most gifted seem to thrive no matter what you do, and the most diasabled seem to struggle no matter what you do. Ellie has pointed out that students that get used to writing in all caps can form bad habits about capitalization, but when dealing with very young or disabled students that want to write, all caps writing is necessary in my opinion. All caps are used in labeling maps and in addressing handwritten envelopes, so these are good early lessons for all caps writing students.

 

Less is more. A few well written letters is better than a lot of messy letters.

 

How to Tutor or Alpha-Phonics make a great source for early copywork. The early scope and sequence is ingenious in my opinion.

 

I prefer Spading's WRTR 6th edition vertical hand to the HTT/A-P slanted hand for cursive. But if you do want to teach slanted cursive, Don Potter has a free and top quality downloadable cursive program lined up with HTT/A-P.

[arliemaria]

Going through old content and saw this advice you gave me last year.  Now with all the O-G and Don Potter stuff I've read the last few days, I am totally taking your advice.  Thank you!