My son has suddenly shown an interest in cursive writing. I find him continually swirling and doodling on the backs of pages. He wants me to read what he’s “written,” and since I cannot, I’m thinking it’s about time to introduce him to the real thing.
We tackled cursive in K4, as A Beka recommends. Whether it was because he was a little young (not quite four) or just less coordinated, cursive was a great contributor to our first early failure that year. I finally gave up and taught him manuscript, assuming we’d get to cursive “one day.” In the back of my mind, I’ve been secretly hoping that “one day” would come soon enough that I could still use my K4 materials. Thankfully, I think that day has arrived.
I’ve anticipated adding cursive as one of our summer subjects on the days we don’t do art, but then I ran across this blog post that suggested laminating writing guides to teach handwriting. I did this to some extent with manuscript, but for some reason it slipped my mind as I was planning for this summer. I’m so glad for the reminder!
So, over the weekend I laminated my chart of cursive letters, got out a dry erase marker, and dropped it into one of our workbox pockets. And over the weekend, my son discovered his chart. He was so excited that he couldn’t even wait until Monday and begged to do his chart as a “quiet time” activity. Saturday afternoon, my son sat beside me on the couch while I—you guessed it—fed the baby, and he carefully traced each letter on his chart. Once he finished it, he erased his letters and took his chart to the front porch, sat beside Dad, and traced them all again.
The chart has stayed in his workbox pocket, and he has voluntarily pulled it out nearly every day. Such an improvement on our first attempt! I am really glad that I held off until cursive writing became this much fun.
And for those of you who don’t have unused K4 materials stashed on your shelves or maybe feel you need a little more practice, I found this awesome resource of cursive writing worksheets. Pair this with Donna Young’s cursive handwriting animations, and you’ve got a complete curriculum for free!
