Cursive and Copywork

We have been working on cursive handwriting skills for about a year.  When doing beginning cursive it is all about learning a beginning curves, strokes, loops and then moving into letters.  We are now working on connecting letters. I do wish that Adrian would of learned cursive before print.  After reading through research and attending conferences this would have been more beneficial for his motor skills and reading skills.  I do strongly suggest that you begin cursive in Kindergarten or when your child begins writing skills.

Notice the "stop"?
I would let Adrian choose
how far he wanted to copy
each letter and then he could
stop when he went as far as he
could and do his best. 

 Why do I suggest starting cursive at such an early age? When your child was 3-6 years old what kind of shapes would they draw when given a crayon? Probably, loops and curves, and you saw these on paper, your walls, windows, finger painting, etc..  This is a very natural way for a child to learn to write.  Think how hard it is for children at a young age to draw straight lines constantly and making sure they connect correctly at several different points.  I can't remember the number exactly but there are around 60 or so strokes to learn when printing compared to around 10 strokes in cursive.  Children with or without dyslexia tend to flip p, d and b. These letters, (b,p,d) when written in cursive, are much easier to distinguish than when written in print.

Imagine your child looking back at their grandparents writings or historical documents and they can't read them because these amazing writings are in cursive. Believe it or not this is a growing problem that many students and some adults can't read their grandparents writings and they have to be read by someone else. 

Sample of copywork. This could be
poetry, scripture, quotes etc.

One more advantage, reading skills are improved because cursive flows from left to right without many stopping points. If you need more reasons just search for the advantages of cursive writing and you will find an abundance!

Copywork is an important part of learning because it does more than just improve the child's handwriting.  Copywork strengthens motor skills, sentence structure, rich vocabulary, spelling skills and much more and this is just a benefit not it's purpose. Your child will be developing good writing habits! 

In the picture above I would write out first what I wanted Adrian to copy.  This amount took the span of about 3 days.  Remember it is about quality not quantity.  I want to make sure that his quality is his best so great work tends to take much longer.  Some of the best known works of craftsmanship took many days or years.  We aren't finished because we want to finish the verses 2-4 so each day I will add more and more.  He despises writing so I start out slow and build and this has been working well for us.  Notice how the first day was only his name, the second day was the date and Samuel 22:2-4, then the third day is The Lord is my rock.  The next line(s) will be about 6-8 words depending upon their length.  Our next step will be to look from a text then copy to paper and finally dictation. I will dictate a sentence for him to write down.