Cursive First by Elizabeth FitzGerald

Cursive First is a beginning handwriting program that works perfectly with SWR because it teaches all the lower case letters first, starting with the clock-face letters (a, c, d, g, o, and q) as suggested in SWR. Each letter starts at the baseline in Cursive First and this has greatly helped my children in writing cursive.

Many Spell to Write and Read (SWR) users have opted to teach cursive from the beginning because the flowing nature of cursive eliminates letter reversals. For example, it is pretty hard to reverse a cursive lower case b, since it starts out like a cursive l, adding a backward curve to make a belly! But reversals of the letters b and d are very common for students writing in manuscript (printing).  A child learning cursive from the beginning (age 5 or 6) does not have the awkward changing period where they have to learn a new style of forming letters in second or third grade.  All lower case cursive letters start from the same beginning point (eliminating letter reversals). Manuscript letters start from many different positions, which can lead to letter reversals.  Cursive writing can also help prevent dyslexia.

I have seven children and have home schooled them for nearly eight years.  The first 4 boys were taught printing first and made a fair (not excellent) changeover to cursive around 2nd grade.  I have chosen to teach my 5-year-old son cursive from the start.  I have been amazed at how well this bouncing, Tigger-like boy has mastered cursive writing.  We started with cursive using large motor movements first (writing on the sidewalk, in a salt box, and on an indoor black board).  He now easily writes all in cursive, and finished his Kindergarten year at List I-4 in the WISE Guide.

I am a handwriting program junkie and have used about every method on the market with my children. But it was not until I started with SWR and Cursive First that I finally learned how to teach my children handwriting. Previously I used some nice looking books, but tended to rely on the tracing method of teaching handwriting while I was away stirring a pot of soup.  When I came back to see my child's handwriting sheet I was often shocked to see that they had traced the letters in all the wrong directions.

Another thing I like about Cursive First is that you are given permission to copy the pages to use with your entire family. I have 7 children and this has been a big saving to me.  You can use this program with any age child (5 years old to 18 years old) because there are no cutesy pictures to distract or look babyish. 

SWR and Cursive First have taught me a totally new approach to teaching handwriting. First off, DON'T START WITH TRACING! The first thing for a very young child is to teach proper letter formation of each letter with large motor activities. Starting with large motor writing activities took the stress out of learning cursive for my five-year-old son. After he could form the letters with large motor (sidewalk chalk, black board, salt box etc.) we moved on to paper writing.

When your child is ready trace a letter on paper, don't go off and stir the soup, but stay with them and make sure they trace it in the proper direction. My five-year-old son was able to take dictation of spelling words in cursive from the start because of Cursive First. I never thought this would be possible. If you want to see a sample of my son’s handwriting when he was 5 ½ years old go to this post and scroll towards the bottom:

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/MorningStarLearning/74652/

Britta McColl, Morning Star Learning 

Below are some photos from two very diligent little girls and their mother, Tara Traw!  They made the transition from manuscript to cursive in only five days.  The List A page is her nearly 6 year old daughter, and the page with “close” and “clothes” and on was written by her nearly 7 year old daughter.

Tara will tell you how they did this.  Keep in mind that the girls were already printing very well, had high standards for penmanship, and were highly motivated to learn cursive.  It took me about 2 months to teach my five-year-old son to write properly in cursive.  This time went quickly, and the important thing to remember is to go at the child’s pace while having fun and keeping high standards for penmanship.  (Do not fall into the trap of comparing your children to another person’s child!!)

Also, several years back I tried to transition my 6 and 7 year olds to cursive and did not have this same level of success.  Several factors:  My 6 and 7 year old were boys, they were not motivated to learn cursive, and I was also busy teaching algebra and other upper level subjects to my older boys.  These boys are now 8 and 9 and write very well in cursive, but I am curious if I could have had quicker success if I had stopped all other subjects for these boys and devoted 3 periods a day to learning cursive as Tara did.  Either way, please don’t feel guilty if you don’t or can’t pull off learning cursive in 5 days. (I didn’t.) But I do believe there are some lessons we can learn from this family’s diligence.     ~Britta

Tara writes:

 The first photo is from the almost 6 year old (7 more days) and the second one was the almost 7 (14 more days).  Keep in mind both girls have been EXCELLENT printers for over a year and highly motivated to learn cursive.  The girls were also already familiar with the terminology of clock face letters and the placement of letters on dotted half lines.

We basically had 3 sessions per day for 5 days and after the first day I knew we would be able to fly through them. That was all we did (for those five days) last week.  It was kind of like potty training where that's all you think about and all you do.  I didn't want them ever printing again so I knew we would have to keep pressing, because they love to write and I wasn't letting them until they could write everything in cursive.

 The hardest thing at first was going from vertical to slant.  I just stood behind each of them while they tried and we persisted.  They had to break out of that huge arch required in printing. 

They were highly motivated and so that was a big help.  The laminated cards were good because the letters in the front were large and they could finger-trace.  Honestly I didn't use the dialogue after the first one unless I had to slow them down and help them with a tricky letter.  /h/ was one of them. 

 I think Cursive First is an excellent work and the neat thing is that all of the drawbacks that Liz FitzGerald (author of Cursive First) talked about to starting manuscript first, every single one of them, my older one was experiencing.  Those challenges could very well have been from using the manuscript.  Hence the comment, “No printing ever again!” 

 Now my oldest is having to concentrate really hard to make her spelling words because she is so new at the cursive and how to connect the letters.  It's easier for the younger one. 

 But right after learning the /z/ the oldest one, almost seven, insisted upon writing a letter to her great grandmother, so I let her give it a try.  Her letter in cursive turned out excellent!

To read more on the program Cursive First go to the author’s web site at:

http://home.mindspring.com/~teachingkids/id17.html

 To purchase a complete line of SWR products including Cursive First and/or Blank Top Writing Paper go to http://www.morningstarlearning.com