Cursive in Kindergarten

I was at a curriculum sale (Abeka) the other day to buy some math workbooks for the boys and came across a pamphlet titled "Cursive in Kindergarten." Interesting, OK, I'll bite. I took it home and read it through and it was fascinating. I learn all kinds of new things about the history of education from homeschooling.

Turns out, print handwriting (or ball and stick as some like to call it) was introduced in the era of Dick and Jane thinking it would help the kids recognize the letters in the readers. Before that, learning to write meant learning cursive. The pamphlet argued that this introduction of ball and stick writing was the introduction of bad penmanship. After kids thoroughly learn how to print, then in about 3rd or 4th grade, everything is unlearned and they are expected to write in cursive. Unfortunately, it's hard to break those original habits.

Epiphany: my own horrible handwriting is horrible because it's a combination of print and cursive. I retained a lot of the print training, but connect some of the letters to make it faster and easier to write. Translation: bad penmanship.

So I decided to try it (without buying their fancy Cursive in Kindergarten program). For copywork in the morning, I told Ethan we were learning something new and I showed him how to write one word in cursive. He was so excited to write like Mom and Dad, and declared that he LOVES writing cursive. OK, OK, I know in a week he'll hate it as much as he hated printing, but I was still encouraged. I think the theory is a good one and learning about it made me want to improve my own penmanship and purge my handwriting of ball and stick habits.