We're Learning Cursive

I've been pondering whether or not to teach cursive to my daughter. There are those who argue that cursive can be taught before manuscript writing. There are also those who say that cursive is dying, and there is no need to teach it. I decided against it until she started showing interest in it. Now, she wants to read notes sent home from the teacher, etc. So, I thought it would be good just to go ahead and teach her. We've only had one lesson. What I've decided to do is to break the letters up into combinations of strokes. The actual strokes, to me, are a little too simple. You can find the basic strokes for cursive, here.

I thought that we would have a hard time. I thought crying would be involved, but much to my surprise. We made it through the lesson without any drama. I think the key to success was that we didn't try to do to much, and their was an objective with a foreseeable outcome. Unlike our mini math lessons of recent, she enjoyed this one. Maybe it was because she's slightly interested.

The letters we practiced were t,i,c, a, d. The goal was to be able to write a and d, but in writing those two letters one can also learn to write t (without the cross), i (without the dot), and c. The pic is her tracing of my writing. The top a's are of her own doing before we even began the lesson. People take lots of liberties when writing in cursive. I had to look everything up to make sure I taught things the right way. Gee, I love google!