Does anyone use D'Nealian HW instead of traditional?

[Wind-in-my-hair]

Just wondering if anybody uses this non-traditional program? http://www.dnealian.com/compare.html

[morgan]

One of my children learned D'Nealian in public school. I thought it looked nice.

[MaeFlowers]

My ds learned D'Nealian in public school as well. I looked at the site you provided and would disagree on a few points. One, it does not seem to help with reversals. Ds still reverses b and d on occasion (he is now in 3rd). Second, it does not necessarily have the flow in writing they describe. Ds still picks up his pencil to make the letters. Third, it did not help him in terms of "normal sized print". Because of the way he writes and the style of D'Nealian, his handwriting was/is very sloppy. He did move into cursive easliy but it would not say that D'Nealian was the reason because it seems he never used it correctly to begin with.

 

[SFM]

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[Mrs Twain]

D'Nealian was the bane of my existence for more than a year.  We pulled our eldest child out of public school midway through first grade.  He had been taught D'Nealian.  I had to work very hard with him to fix all of the problems created by the D'Nealian.  For example, the lower case L was one of the worst problems.  D'Nealian has kids make that letter with a curve at the bottom.  My son's lower case L's all looked like c's.  There were multiple problems like that.

 

Another issue I have with D'Nealian is that kids will not learn the standard form of printing which is important on things such as hand written forms which are read by computers.  Perhaps this may not be an issue someday (since everything may be done directly on computers) but it could be an issue now.  How is a computer going to read a D'Nealian lower case L?

[MommytoFour]

My daughter who is 4 learned D'Nealian in occupational therapy (she has sensory issues -- so a couple days a week has therapy) because the doctor there believes it's best for her.

 

So far, we haven't had any issues with it but she's not writing the entire alphabet yet.

[Wind-in-my-hair]

My impression is that its major corner-cutting, The reason I brought it up is I searched for sandpaper letters (a Montessori tactile tool used in pre-k) that I could make myself for home use, and saw these weird cursive-y letters and no uppercase. I found out what it was and why it was used in Montessori programs. I want to make sandpaper letters to correspond to our ZB material. 

 

But the weirdest thing I read was how the D'Nealian program teaches the pencil hold. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Punchie]

I use D'Nealian w/my DD. I chose it because it segues nicely into cursive. We don't follow it 100%. My handwriting is a cursive-print hybrid, so I'm not overly particular if DD writes some of her letters differently than how DN instructs.

[Incognito]

We use D'Nealian.  It is an option with the Simply Charlotte Mason materials, and it is close to what is used with Phonics Museum.  I grew up with it and my DD was having reversal problems which it did solve (she still reverses some things, but b/d is better). 

 

It has never been an obstacle for me with filling out any forms - perhaps the ones that can't handle it are the forms that a person is directed to fill out in all caps?

 

 

[busymotherof4]

We are a D'Nealian family. It's what I learned in school. My oldest 3 learned it in school. I was briefly lured into Handwriting without Tears for #4. It was a Huge mistake! He only wanted to use capital letters. I switched mid 1st grade and now in 2 nd his handwriting is improving. We are almost finished with the 1st grade workbook. We love it.

This is what we are using http://www.rainbowresource.com/product/D%92Nealian+Handwriting+Book+1/000362/53d482ee7af5e4568b7346fd?subject=9&category=7894

It starts with lowercase letters and the practice words only use letters already learned. The transition to cursive is easy. I don't know of any drawbacks.

[Lizzie in Ma]

Yup, have used it since day 1.  I think it's lovely.

[Hunter]

One thing I have observed, is that ball and stick is more tiring to write neatly than D'Nealian or cursive.

 

I have found left slanting cursive D'Nealian, but not manuscript. I've thought about switching my instruction to D'nealian, but without a left-slanting model, I'm not confident about teaching it to my learning disabled lefties.