TOS Crew Review~ Peterson Directed Handwriting

My Tink is my slow learner. Even at 10 years old, she needs some extra time and instruction to get things. We were having a terrible time with her handwriting. It looked like something a first grader would produce and was excruciating to watch. Every movement was slow and laborious. She’s right handed but her hand was crooked over like a leftie and her letter and word spacing were very uneven. She was still mixing her lower case b’s and d’s. I was about at my wit’s end. Plus, Tink wanted to write in cursive. I thought, “What??? You can’t even write manuscript, how are you going to learn cursive?”

We tried several different tracing workbooks. Nothing helped. Finally I emailed one of the co-authors of our reading program (100 Easy Lessons) and she suggested forgetting manuscript and teaching her cursive. Wow, I’d never thought of that before, I guess Tink was on the right track all on her own. The nice lady sent me to a website by a man named Don Potter and on that site I found a very interesting free e-book, however the book was huge. The ideas presented in the book were very interesting and we started incorporating some of those ideas into our lesson time but I was never able to finish the book. We again searched for tracing workbooks, this time they were in cursive. After trying a couple with little instruction, we found one popular Christian curriculum that actually had some of the same ideas in that large book. Tink was finally on her way.

Then I was chosen to review Peterson’s handwriting course. I was so excited!! This was one of the curricula I’d read about on Don Potter’s website and I was getting to try it out. Yay! I was in contact with Rand Nelson from Peterson several times to determine which level to start Tink off on and he shipped out a grade 3 complete packet. Rand also gave me several tips on how to teach the Dude cursive first. Peterson does not actually have a K cursive package, but Rand is thinking about developing one. I would love that. However, since there’s not much demand for cursive at the K level, the development of that particular course is on a back burner for now. What’s really funny is while talking to Rand, he mentioned that he was working with Don Potter to develop the K cursive curriculum. And the large handwriting instruction book I’d been trying to read a few months before was a Peterson product! Small world. 

We began air-writing before getting the Peterson program since I’d read about in the large book. That helped Tink quite a bit. Once we got started with the Peterson program though, her writing started to take off. She’s not all the way there yet, but her spacing and legibility has improved so much. She loves the rhythm of the instruction. Somehow that just speaks very clearly to her and makes her understand where the other programs could not make sense to her.

A couple of weeks ago, Tink wrote the names of all our family members on a piece of paper in cursive.  It was just for fun and was very legible. I can’t wait to see what her writing looks like when we’ve completed the entire book. Here was this child who formerly hated writing anything practicing cursive all on her own and she was enjoying it. 

The Peterson curriculum was obviously written for use in a classroom but we adapted it to our homeschool very easily, in fact there was not much adaptation to work through at all. There is a positioning sticker that is meant for use on a student desk but Tink just uses it as a guideline and repositions it as needed. Now she wants a desk.lol.

I still haven’t decided yet whether I want the Dude to learn cursive first or not. Right now I’m leaning toward just starting with the basic Peterson K program since I know it works.

We received from Peterson the Complete Grade 3 Homeschool Kit

For $38.55 the Kit contains; Teacher Handbook, Student Text, Position Guides, Triangular Pencil, Animated Letter Cards CD Rom, Handwriting Songs CD, Supplemental teacher information. There are also other kit options, pencils, pens, grippers and wall cards available for purchase in the Peterson store.

Now, I know some people think the Peterson method is a bit difficult to learn, but personally, after attempting to read that extremely large e-book I mentioned earlier, using the Peterson teacher’s manual included in the kit was waaaay easier. It’s really only a few pages. Once you get the method down, the lessons are very quick and easy, exactly the kind of thing that works for Tink.

The animated letter cards are probably something I wouldn’t have ordered by looking at the site but when I showed them to Tink, it really made sense to her and she got the idea of the rhythm of writing much better. The Handwriting Songs CD is, well, a bit cheesy but honestly so are many songs to teach children things but they seem to be effective. Now when I get Dude’s handwriting package, I can order the basic kit and not have to re-order the complete kit with the CDs. That’ll save me some money. 

I wish I’d had Peterson for teaching Ninja handwriting. She struggled with it as well but got better at it after lots and lots of cursive instruction. I think Peterson Handwriting would have made our lives so much easier.

Overall I think this is a fantastic program. Well worth the price of the kits in my opinion.