In
today's world it's becoming increasingly important to support family
run businesses. Personally, I try to go out of my way to
support local companies, family businesses, and American made products.
Aside from New
American Cursive: Penmanship Program Workbook I being
a top notch program for teaching children to write cursive in a fun
and easy fashion, Memoria
press is
a family run business. For me, that's the icing on the cake!
Memoria
Press was
founded by Cheryl Lowe and her son Brian in 1998, and in 2000 they
opened the Highland Latin School where all of the Memoria Press
products are taught and field tested. Cheryl is an experienced
homeschool parent as well as a teacher of many other subjects from
phonics to Latin. Today's
Woman magazine
even voted Cheryl one of the "Most Admired Women" of
2014.
I've read a lot over the past year about the benefit of cursive handwriting to the development of the young brain. Learning to write cursive has benefits that reach far beyond the ability to read cursive that naturally accompanies the learning to write process. It has also been brought to my attention that there could even be benefit to young children to start with cursive right from the beginning as opposed to the standard printing that we seem to teach most often. Within the New American Cursive workbook it is pointed out that cursive does improve the speed of writing thereby improving the attention span as well as the ability to excel academically. The mere act of writing in cursive provides an impressive amount of benefits to the young student.
I've read a lot over the past year about the benefit of cursive handwriting to the development of the young brain. Learning to write cursive has benefits that reach far beyond the ability to read cursive that naturally accompanies the learning to write process. It has also been brought to my attention that there could even be benefit to young children to start with cursive right from the beginning as opposed to the standard printing that we seem to teach most often. Within the New American Cursive workbook it is pointed out that cursive does improve the speed of writing thereby improving the attention span as well as the ability to excel academically. The mere act of writing in cursive provides an impressive amount of benefits to the young student.
With
the above information in mind, I decided to try New
American Cursive with
all three of our children in mind. Harmony, the nine-year-old,
is our primary focus. She has a strong desire to write in cursive,
and we plan to ease into having her submit more and more of her
assignments in cursive writing over the next year. Just watching
Harmony write in cursive excites the younger two. I let them
practice letters separately, but I use the same approach provided
withing the New American Cursive workbook. Avery, age 5, enjoys it
very much. Bella, age 4, is not quite ready. She can write a few
letters, but her attention span for this sort of thing is much more
limited. When working with the workbook, Harmony usually spends
about 15 minutes per day working on letter and practice pages.
Watching Harmony practice her cursive is providing the younger two
with a glimpse into cursive writing and all it entails as well as
substantiating the information I have been learning in relation to
this subject over the past year. I feel encouraged and inspired to
teach the younger two cursive right from the start, and they seem
eager to learn. Bonus! As far as I am concerned there is everything
to gain and nothing to lose.
We
will certainly stick with this program for the duration. New
American Cursive is
fun and simple which are two very important factors for learning
tools making it into our homeschool. Despite being geared to
grade 1 and above, I plan to use this method of teaching cursive with
all of my children over the next year. Anything that can span the
vast age gap of my children is a top contender for sure. Talk
about a shining star! With the nine-year-old, I will be
following the advice of the program and slowly requiring more and
more work submitted in cursive after she's mastered the letter
spacing, accuracy, and speed. This process will surely take
longer for the younger two when we incorporate it into their day, but
it will occur at a much younger age for them which is totally
exciting. Just think, all that's needed to learn cursive is a workbook for each child and 15 minutes or less per day. Couldn't be more simple!
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