Cursive First program?
I have ordered Beautiful handwriting for Children and Cursive First to compare them. Anyone have experience with either of these?
I have one boy almost 7 who has beautiful (ball and stick) handwriting who is ready to move on to cursive/Italic and another boy 5 who won't hold a pencil!
I would love to do the Italic, but it's foreign to me and frankly, I already have such a huge learning curve with all the LCC curriculum I'm afraid to try anything else new. :o) Whichever we end up using, I'd like to use with both boys.
Thanks!
Cursive First
I really like Cursive First. They provide excellent descriptions to teach the children how to form letters. I currently use it with my almost six year old boy, but very, very slowly and on a chalkboard.
I used Handwriting Without Tears for my older kids. It did provide easy, good instruction, but I hate the look of their handwriting. Also, HWT manuscript teaches capitals first; my kids got confused as to when to use capitals and when to use lowercase. I have found that it makes much more sense to my kids to teach lowercase first, then teach capitals as special letters that we only use for particular reasons.
I've never looked at Beautiful Handwriting for Children, but I heartily recommend Cursive First, especially if you use any kind of WRTR or SWR spelling program.
I thought italic was usually
I thought italic was usually taught instead of ball-and-stick to make the transition to cursive easier. That's what I was taught with, so far as I can recall.
For your 5 yo., in addition to not rushing him on the writing (I would probably do other things to help him build his fine motor skills until he's ready), you might try Handwriting Without Tears, which is geared for kids who don't take easily to writing. The other advantage to HWT is that there's not excessive repetition of exercises just for handwriting, so you could use it with your 7 yo. and also monitor his handwriting in copywork, etc.