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Littlejen22

They are teaching Valeria cursive?!?! At 4! I cannot even get my almost 7yo to write most of his letters correctly (meaning he writes from bottom to top instead of top to bottom, etc).

ambrvan

They don't even teach cursive in our schools anymore. Period. But the print alphabet is written at a slant with little curly tails on all the letters. Looks like a "handwriting script" font or something. And in kindergarten, they actually corrected students who wrote their letters like we would have growing up.

Littlejen22

I think his issue is that they just are not being taught penmanship. And he was writing before he officially learned it so when he would get a sheet in Kindergarten he would not follow the arrows. But honestly they are not teaching it so they don't correct it. I really need to make him practice but it is hard to get it in with homework, reading, I hate making him do more work and he needs to practice it a lot to correct his bad habits.

Ilumine

I actually believe in cursive.  And I believe that it should be done early on, but not with a grade attached.  

The brain stops creating it's neuro-pathways around 4 and 5.  The more neuro-pathways the better.  The fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination skills, and memory function skills are important for children to have. 

Why take away yet another learning activity that will help our children with their overall growth? 

But again, I do not think they need to be GRADED on it.  They just need to practice it. 

sweetie0228

@littlejen22

https://www.hwtears.com/hwt

"Research supports the active teaching of handwriting. Recent findings demonstrate that writing by hand improves creative writing skills and fine motor skills. In fact, elementary students have been found to write more and faster by hand than when keyboarding."

 

This was developed by an Occupational Theripist.  My son was too old when I realized this existed.  But I've seen other children be able to thrive in the classroom because of it.

 

Ginlyn0

DD has handwriting difficulty stemming from her fine motor issues related to her AS as well as the fact that she is a lefty and was never taught to write "like a lefty" because no one we know is left handed. She writes like a right handed person does just left handed. They were not taught cursive and she can't read cursive. It is really annoying because she even just prints her name when she signs things.

Her handwriting is very difficult to read and when discussed with the school after her getting repeatedly marked off of her written reports in other classes for the teacher not being able to read we were told that she can type any assignment as handwriting is a thing of the past. As Sweetie mentioned, I hear the handwriting without tears stuff is great and wished I had known about it sooner.

 

Littlejen22

I cannot figure out with HWWOTs what to order. Can anyone figure it out? I was thinking I might just print sheets. His handwriting is not bad, it is just decent but the fact that the little d starts at the top, goes straight into the circle and then down in one swoop is driving me nuts. And he wants to write cursive and to learn on his own but that is harder if your print is not good. And he is righty but DD is lefty.

sweetie0228

@littlejen22

I would go with https://shopping.hwtears.com/product/P3/handwriting it's the second grade book where they finsih up mastery of printing and then show the steps for prepping for cursive and then I would get the cursive workbook.