For those of you who taught cursive first, was it worth it?

[GoodnightMoogle]

Or did you regret it?

I don’t mean the curriculum called “Cursive First,” but just in general! I’ve been following the Logic of English Facebook page, and after reading some more about this issue the idea of cursive first is starting to grow on me.

Here are the supposed benefits I’m seeing:

1. Easier on the hand. Less lifting = less motor fatigue.

2. Helps kids who tend to reverse letters keep them straight.

3. Some kids with awful, slopping printing seem to do better with cursive. Perhaps the fact that the letters connect helps keep them from getting too crazy.

4. It’s beautiful! It’s a part of our history. (Ok, that could be argued at any time).

The arguments against it are that it’s more difficult, that it’s less practical in today’s world and therefore a waste of time, and, perhaps the one that worries me the most, that it makes reading more challenging since their written letters don’t match what they are reading in books. However, I have seen people make the argument that printing and book face are also different and kids quickly learn to read in both, but it’s pretty clear to me that cursive is quite different from both.

Anyway, would love to hear any advice, success stories, fail stories, curriculum recommendations (or stay-away-froms).  Or you can tell me I’m overthinking this and it doesn’t matter, it’s just handwriting (you have no idea how much time I’ve spent thinking about handwriting programs 🤦🏻‍♀️).

[Nm.]

I have a friend who does this and all of her 10 children read.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Lovinglife123

[Dianthus]

I have done LOE cursive first with 3 and all have good hand writing. With my first child, I realized that I needed to demonstrate proper manuscript technique also around age 6-7. I maintain the manuscript by having them copy spelling words in manuscript. They have to more deliberately think about forming the words and it helps with the spelling.  All can write well both ways but prefer cursive because it's faster. 

Eta. All of these children read very well. It was never an issue. The LOE books are printed mostly in manuscript but the writing portions are cursive. Non issue for us.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Dianthus

[Rosie_0801]

My daughter couldn't remember how to write until I taught her to join.

[HomeAgain]

I taught D'Nealian, the same that I had learned as a child.  D'Nealian starts out by teaching most of the print forms as being identical to the cursive forms, just without the joins.  Notable exceptions are f, r, s, and z, and the usual capital letters.  We modified the s to be more consistent between the two.  I think it's a brilliant system.  It allows for each form to be unique in a child's mind, and not a placement of balls and sticks.  Youngest ds was writing in cursive by the end of 1st after figuring out the basic joins in K. There was no big transition or tears about learning a whole new method.

I honestly think we are cruel to children in their early years.  Much of what is traditionally taught is a method of giving and taking away.  Here's the alphabet, but all the names you memorized won't help you read.  Here are the uppercase letters, but we probably should have taught lowercase first because more than 80% of text doesn't use uppercase.  Here's a method of putting down balls and sticks, now forget it and figure out how to make the letter continuously.  It's just mean.  I'd rather find ways to build consistently than screw around with them at each new step.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

We used LOE, but began with manuscript because it frustrated DS that the cursive letters didn’t look like the ones in his books.

Ramona Quimby’s “kitty-cat Q’s” are what convinced him to learn cursive, several years later, in 1st grade. 😅

[Not_a_Number]

We print first in English but start with cursive in Russian. Both have worked out fine 🤷‍♀️. I’d guess that’d be true for most kids.

[Tanager]

Montessori teaches cursive first, I didn’t quite grasp the concept with my first until I read more about it. I ended up teaching her cursive in second grade and from then on she did everything in cursive to help her with dysgraphia like issues. My next child used LOE and he did cursive first. He does confuse g and q sometimes in cursive so it’s not foolproof with reversals. It rarely happens now (he’s in 1st and finished LOE D at the beginning of the year.) Overall I’d recommend it, there wasn’t any confusion between print or cursive letters. We used the wooden Montessori cursive cut out letters before and with LOE. I found having them in order in the box helped him find the letter he needed when sounding out words to spell at the beginning (he would sing the ABC song until he found his letter). The only downside is when he is in classes the other kids can’t read his work.Just make sure when you do teach print to watch carefully that the letters get formed correctly. He knows his print as we did it mid-year, he just prefers cursive. I’ve found a lot of kids aren’t learning cursive these days. My oldest has to write in print for bday cards and such.

[KSera]

I tried it with one kid, using LOE cursive, but in the end did not fully succeed as she learned to read faster than to write and would use the print letters she was familiar with from reading to write things on her own (she liked to write a lot in her free time). So then it meant she was self teaching printing and not learning good form and then that was hard to modify. She chose to use print for her own writing, and continued to do so and still does as a nearly high schooler. 
 

I still think it makes good sense, but it just didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped. 

[GoodnightMoogle]

On 3/16/2023 at 9:48 PM, Lovinglife123 said:

I have a friend who does this and all of her 10 children read.

Outrageous 

[GoodnightMoogle]

14 hours ago, Tanager said:

I’ve found a lot of kids aren’t learning cursive these days. My oldest has to write in print for bday cards and such.

I do feel sad that as a culture we seemed determined to get rid of cursive. I really think it’s useful and beautiful and I want to teach it, but I hope I’m not doing my kids a disservice  by making in harder in them in the long run. I can’t even write in cursive very well (I’ve been re-teaching myself - long story but my handwriting has always been poor and painful for me) but I can still read it. I just had to read a Christmas card that was sent to my 22-year-old brother because it was written in cursive and he couldn’t read it. We went to the same school district! But they no longer teach cursive. Poor gen z.

If my kids write letters, will their friends be able to read them? I guess we will just have to befriend many weirdo homeschoolers who are also teaching their kids cursive 😂

Edited March 19, 2023 by GoodnightMoogle

[Clarita]

Teaching cursive writing is not quite working out at my house. With my eldest, I'm just ecstatic he picks up a writing instrument to do anything, even drawing and coloring feels like I'm pulling teeth sometimes. My youngest is too enthusiastic, she is just learning how to read and she is copying EVERYTHING. She just spontaneously started copying things from books, packaging, etc.. I just make a point of showing my kids different fonts of writing including the styles of cursive. when I write stuff for them I change what type of handwriting I use. 

My 6 year old can decipher most cursive (f's are hard, then depending on the s). Surprisingly he's pretty good about the r's after I showed him the progression of the r.  

[Ting Tang]

I think it depends on the child, but in my opinion, they must still learn to print.  They should learn both.

My daughter learned cursive first, and she only writes in cursive. Printing is hard for her. I review a tiny bit, but I am happy with our choice here.

Starting cursive with my current Kinder kid didn't work because he is still learning letter recognition and sound.  He isn't as mature as my daughter was at this age, so we are not doing a fancy type of print from his Little Seedlings Press book.  It is very light.

My older two boys learned to print first and then cursive.  It can be a struggle getting them to use their cursive at times.

[kbutton]

We did cursive first after my son learned ball and stick in school (which I now consider educational malpractice because there is nothing to make one letter feel different from another). He learned cursive very well and alternates between cursive and a more sensible form of printing. He does have dysgraphia. He also learned both types of writing before we knew he had convergence insufficiency, so it's remarkable that he did as well as he did.

Second DS has dysgraphia also. He learned cursive first (we used New American Cursive, but we had to slow it way down due to his dysgraphia). I made my own handwriting sheets that corresponded to his phonics. He had no trouble learning cursive that wasn't due to hypermobile hands, vision issues, and retained primitive reflexes. He chose to learn to print on his own and used Getty-Dubay for that. He wrote fluently in cursive first, but ironically, it took him longer to learn to read cursive than to read print. But he was fine writing cursive. He does seem to read it fluently now. 

[JazzyMom]

Have done it both ways, but with current younger ones, I am starting with manuscript.

[maize]

The entire country of France teaches cursive first and everyone does learn to read print. Some beginning readers are printed in cursive though.

[Clarita]

1 hour ago, JazzyMom said:

Have done it both ways, but with current younger ones, I am starting with manuscript.

I want more explanation with this statement, but you don't have to provide it if you don't want to.

Edited March 24, 2023 by Clarita
Reworded I think my first attempt might have been rude.

[JazzyMom]

7 minutes ago, Clarita said:

I want more explanation with this statement, but you don't have to provide it if you don't want to.

I guess I didn’t say much because it’s not a hot button topic for me.

I have 7 school age kids, and having done it both ways, I just don’t think it matters very much.  

I did find that some of my older kids who started with cursive eventually wanted to write primarily in print.  Their print wasn’t very neat, they formed bad habits, and they were too old to really want to work on it.  So I’ve started the younger ones in print.

But again, I don’t believe it’s as big of an issue as it’s sometimes made out to be.  The ones I started off in cursive can write legibly, and all is well.

[GoodnightMoogle]

21 hours ago, JazzyMom said:

I guess I didn’t say much because it’s not a hot button topic for me.

I have 7 school age kids, and having done it both ways, I just don’t think it matters very much.  

I did find that some of my older kids who started with cursive eventually wanted to write primarily in print.  Their print wasn’t very neat, they formed bad habits, and they were too old to really want to work on it.  So I’ve started the younger ones in print.

But again, I don’t believe it’s as big of an issue as it’s sometimes made out to be.  The ones I started off in cursive can write legibly, and all is well.

Thank you for this explanation. My worry too is the formation of bad habits in printing. Perhaps I should just do the easy thing and teach manuscript first. Ugh. But there are so many font choices, too. ZB, LOE, HWT.  Sometimes I wish there were less good things out there 😂 

[serendipitous journey]

On 3/24/2023 at 7:17 PM, GoodnightMoogle said:

Thank you for this explanation. My worry too is the formation of bad habits in printing. Perhaps I should just do the easy thing and teach manuscript first. Ugh. But there are so many font choices, too. ZB, LOE, HWT.  Sometimes I wish there were less good things out there 😂 

If the child learns to write legibly: unusual level of penmanship accomplishment in this day & age!!   🎉

 

[GoodnightMoogle]

12 hours ago, serendipitous journey said:

If the child learns to write legibly: unusual level of penmanship accomplishment in this day & age!!   🎉

 

Sad but true. At the time when I was teaching, elementary students were 1 to 1 with chrome books and seemed to spend more time on those than writing by hand, with math being the exception. 

[Jean in Newcastle]

Cursive activates different parts of the brain than print. I personally think that it’s helpful to know but not essential to teach first. 

[*****]

12 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

Cursive activates different parts of the brain than print.

I have heard this also. A very good reason to teach cursive.

[serendipitous journey]

So, what worked best in my house (we're weird) with my children (super weird) was Memoria Press's K-2 work.  Most of it, wasn't 100%.  And they teach manuscript in, I believe, K-1 and switch to cursive in 2.  Worked well, though the child I put through this treatment occasionally complains that his manuscript isn't very natural to him. 

I think that their K-2 stuff comes in secular, but MP's secular books aren't always as high quality as their standard ones so we just used the mainstream ones and I gave running editorial commentary to my secular humanist child as needed.

Fine print: My littles were extremely resistant to writing.  Extremely.  They are hard to teach generally.  And whenever I've tried to outsource something that's hard for me to teach, the hired teacher fails despite my children being unfailingly polite.  So it isn't just me. 

Anyhow, forewarned is forearmed, so when it came time to get #2 going in school I gave him the MP treatment just so's we'd arrive at 3rd grade able to write and do some focused seatwork.  I did sub out math (used MEP) and reading (used All About Reading 'cause I knew we'd be doing All About Spelling). 

Edited March 30, 2023 by serendipitous journey

[Malam]

12 hours ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

Cursive activates different parts of the brain than prin

Don't any two different activities activate different parts of the brain from each other?

[serendipitous journey]

Just now, Malam said:

Don't any two different activities activate different parts of the brain from each other?

Yeah, you are right. 

I think that the significance of the claim being made is that cursive writing uses the brain in a way fundamentally different to manuscript writing.  Not just a little tweak, but recruiting areas that are distinct in their anatomy (basic patterns of connnectivity to other regions) and physiology (their function).  Which doesn't signify that manuscript or cursive are either superior necessarily. 

I have a hard time finding good primary literature on the cursive vs. handwriting thing.  What does seem compelling is that handwriting offers cognitive benefits over typing/keyboarding, though I haven't time to back it up with references.

[Jean in Newcastle]

10 minutes ago, Malam said:

Don't any two different activities activate different parts of the brain from each other?

No.  Some activities activate the left hemisphere and some the right hemisphere.  Both cursive and printing will activate the motor cortex because it uses voluntary muscles in your hands to make the letters.  But cursive writing stimulates the connection between the right and left hemispheres of the brain in a way that printing does not. 

[mathmarm]

We taught cursive early (not first) and practiced to fluency in the early years and it's paid off nicely for the kids to be able to write neatly in Print or Cursive with fluency.