CursiveLogic Handwriting Review

Almost three years ago I was given the opportunity to review  CursiveLogic's CursiveLogic Workbook. I used it with my Middlest (then 14) as I have tended to take a better late than early tack with handwriting. When the opportunity came up to review the updated version in the Quick-Start Pack with my current 10 year old (as well as The Art of Cursive Adult coloring book), I thought this might be an appropriate time.

His handwriting (or lack of) skills have been more of an issue than his siblings, as I simply could not figure out how to help him keep his lowercase letters an even size. He was also beginning to realize that it was just too hard for others to read easily, so he was somewhat copacetic with the idea of adding cursive to his school day.

The main piece of the CursiveLogic handwriting curriculum is the CursiveLogc workbook. Cursive letters are broken up into shape based sets like the oval letters in the first set... a c d g q o. They learn to identify the motion that goes with the specific shape, and also how to connect each letter to the next. 

The method also includes auditory clues as the student writes as well as color cues to help them remember their letter formation. From the first lesson, your student will learn how to write actual words in cursive, rather than waiting to learn the entire alphabet before starting to form words. 

I was very pleased after the first couple of lessons when my son was actually eager to move on to the next day's lesson. He would bring me his workbook to assess his writing, we'd discuss where there were problems, and he would sometimes erase and rewrite. Other times he would just try harder the next time and see an improvement. 

One of the features I appreciate about this program is the fact that the lessons are kept short and sweet, which is good for just about every child I know, keeping their minds fully engaged for the period of time that they are focused and avoiding brain fatigue. 

The Quick-Start Pack includes 6-month access to a Webinar which walks you (the instructor) through the steps of teaching the CursiveLogic method. It is really addressed to a classroom teacher for the most part, but if you need some guidance in teaching or want to understand more about the reasoning behind the method used, then it could definitely be worth the almost 50-minute investment of time to watch. There are basic instructions on what a week of handwriting instruction should look like, as well as modeling how to teach each set of letters. There are also tidbits on the how and why this method is so logical and works so well. 

The other item we were sent is an adult coloring book that incorporates cursive in the coloring designs. This can be a nice thing for mom to do alongside the kids while they are working on their letters, or as an encouragement for an older student as they complete their lessons. 

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: CursiveLogic 
• Product: Quick-Start Pack and The Art of Cursive and one year access to the Webinar
• Ages: 8+ or earlier if you want to teach cursive first
• Price:  $49 Quick-Start Pack $15.95 The Art of Cursive
• CursiveLogic is offering 

Visit CursiveLogic on Facebook. 

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Homeschool Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

#hsreviews  #cursive #ilovecursive

Learning to Read and Write Beautifully (Review)

In addition to the Handbook for Writers review that I posted last week, members of the TOS Homeschool Review Crew also received digital copies of Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting published by Everyday Education, LLC, and I was given the opportunity to take a brief look at the manual.

The foreward and introduction include suggestions on teaching and scheduling the lessons, as well as some of the different ways the book can be used (From the beginning reading/writing child to the adult who wants to improve or change their handwriting). The scheduling section utilizes short Charlotte Mason inspired segments, which can help eliminate some of the tedium that many feel when learning to write, and avoid tired, cramped hands for small children who are still learning how to use a writing instrument. 

I don't have a beginning reader, but I took a brief look at the reading instruction. For the most part it looks very simple and basic, which is good. The basic method used is to teach/read words in the same family, followed by silly sentences that incorporate the words practiced.
Here is an example of one of the silly sentence pages... 

I did run into a few issues with pronunciation, although they aren't major. I have the feeling that the author may have grown up in a different part of the country, based on some of the sounds for some of the words given. For instance, I was taught (and my dictionary backs my instruction up), that 'care' is pronounced ke(ə)r not kār, so that is an unfortunate example, and I would say that pair, fair, and stair all follow the same e(ə)r sound pattern.

While there may be a few different regional pronunciations that may be coming through in this manual, given that the author's specialty is handwriting, this isn't a huge deal, just something to look out for. 

I also perused the handwriting portion, which was of the most interest to me specifically, as handwriting is always an issue in our home. The manual uses actual handwriting for the examples and not a computer generated font, which makes it easier to copy. There is an informative discussion about the history of italics and styles of writing. After the basics are learned (in the second chapter), the handwriting section covers joining letters, and ornamentation, as well as instruction in using an edged or calligraphy pen.   

I have finally come to terms with my own handwriting, but thought I would give the italics a whirl myself, and this is what I came up with after a few days' practice: 

The reproducible practice sheets throughout the book are useful, and the practice sheets at the end of the book include guides for correct angling of a calligraphy pen, which is often one of the most difficult things to master. Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting is something that I may look at further for my own use (Working on "beautiful" handwriting, with flourishes and joins) and also for that of my youngest child, as we begin to address his handwriting sometime in the future. 
Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Everyday Education, LLC 
• Product: Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting
• Ages: Elementary and Remedial
• Price: $27.00 ebook (reviewed version), $29.00 print book, $44.00 print/ebook bundle

You can visit Everyday Education, LLC on Twitter

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

Practice Makes Perfect! Homeschool Copywork Lifetime Membership Review

It's not often that I am given the opportunity to review something produced by one of my friends, but today I get to talk about the Lifetime Membership from my friend Amy Blevins' company, Homeschool Copywork. She has produced a large number of quality copywork ebooks with themes to suit all ages, and many interests.

Amy has created copywork ebooks which feature themes from Scripture, History, Poetry, Art, Science, Music (Composers and Hymns), Nature, and Seasonal Themes. These ebooks are put together with care. They include multiple styles of print and manuscript for handwriting practice and are beautifully illustrated. Some of the pages have great line drawing illustrations which can be colored in when the copywork is finished, and others are accompanied by full color illustrations.

Some of the books are pretty much strictly copywork, others include extra information and/or activities or suggestions that can become a little unit study. Here is a screen shot from one of the Van Gogh books. You can see that the page has a beautiful Van Gogh picture to go along with the quote~ lovely! The beginning of the book includes a biographical snippet and some activity suggestions.

I really appreciate the variety of styles of print/manuscript that she has included, as all of my children are at different places in their handwriting. My Eldest has developed her own style:

My Middlest is still figuring out his style...

And my Youngest is working on letter size and spacing... writing neatly is something that he needs to work on, and these sheets are great, because they give a clear example for him to follow, using sentences that are interesting and/or beneficial.

Because it's a Presidential Election year we chose to use some pages from the Presidential Quotes book. There are quotes from each one of the Presidents, in a variety of styles.

My eldest was delighted to discover verses that included two of her favorite things, Dragons AND Owls in the Dragons of the Bible book (Among other Dragon references...)

My youngest was also interested in The Armor of God book... Anything having to do with "army" or "armor" makes him happy, even if it isn't Military Police or some other modern force. For my part, I think this is a good way to help to learn the verses from Ephesians 6!

Some of the benefits of using copywork, even into high school include:

• Reinforcing proper  Spelling, Punctuation, Vocabulary, Sentence Structure, and Grammar ~ as they copy what is correctly modeled they *will* learn.
• Memorization aid~ when the eyes see the words, the brain thinks the words, and the hands write the words they are more likely to be retained. This is where quality copywork comes into play. We want our children to be putting meaningful words to paper, into their brains, and hearts. Amy's books definitely set a standard here. 
• Of course, there is also the benefit of "hopefully" improving penmanship. This is a big thing with my youngest, as his letters are of all shapes, sizes, and smooshed together, so seeing properly spaced and written words directly above his workspace is extremely helpful! 

While Amy often shares some samples of her copywork ebooks for free, a membership allows you to pick and choose content from *everything* that she has produced (I believe I counted 47 copywork ebooks), as well as access to Member only Bonus materials, including notebooking and coloring pages.

This is a great resource for all ages.
Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Homeschool Copywork
• Product: Lifetime Membership
• Ages: Pre-K to High School
• Price: Lifetime Membership $45, Full Membership $29.95 for one year

You can visit Homeschool Copywork on their social media channels:
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

Alpha Omega Publications~ Horizons 2nd Grade Penmanship Set Review

Interesting times on the TOS Review Crew! This time around Little Brother got his turn with a handwriting set specific to his age/grade. Alpha Omega Publications sent us the Horizons 2nd Grade Penmanship Set for review (Other reviewers received different products for Pre-K to 2nd grade materials covering a variety of subjects including health, math, and spelling, among others~ be sure to click on the link at the end of my review to see their reviews).

I have not had a lot of experience with Alpha Omega I do know many people who have used LifePacs and Switched on Schoolhouse, as well as some of the Horizons products (I think I used a Horizons math book once when my oldest was in... maybe Kindergarten? Long enough that I don't remember for sure...). My youngest hasn't had a lot of practice with penmanship, so I thought this might be a good item to check out.

Included in this set is the consumable Workbook and the Teacher's Guide.

Alpha Omega tends to be a great choice for those who thrive on worksheets and the ease of boxed curriculum. It includes Bible verses and quotations for handwriting practice, which is always a nice feature for those who are looking for faith-based and/or moral character copy-work.  The teacher's guide is scripted, and very complete. The Cursive manuscript is taught upper and lowercase together. An example:

More samples can be found on the product page linked above and in my "nitty gritty" section

This appears to me to be more of a cursive readiness course than a full fledged cursive course, which makes sense if one follows a traditional schedule. Cursive is often taught in 3rd grade in a traditional classroom. In this penmanship set, the first 75 lessons focus on reviewing manuscript letter formation, words and sentences. The next 50 lessons introduce cursive alphabet formation, and the final 33 lessons are for cursive practice and manuscript review.

We did a little bit of skipping around in our use of this set, for the purposes of review, doing some manuscript review, and then working on a few cursive letters. As mentioned above, the approach is very traditional, and it might be confusing/overwhelming for a child to learn both the upper and the lower case formation of each letter on the same day.

I certainly saw that with my son, who may be something of a stereotypical boy. He is not fond of handwriting yet (He may also have some genetic hang-ups with penmanship.  As I may have mentioned once or twice in previous reviews... penmanship was the bane of my elementary education... sigh), and while he did the work, certainly showed that he isn't ready to be regularly confined to lines and consistent letter height/size.

One of the best aspects of this curriculum from his point of view is that the lessons are intended to be short and sweet, (ala Charlotte Mason...) funny boy...

As far as I can tell, Alpha Omega uses the Zaner-Bloser style of penmanship. I would like to see Alpha Omega offer a few different manuscript and cursive styles ( at least one italic and maybe even something fancy like the Palmer style I grew up with) in their Penmanship curricula, so that those who like the format/set-up of the Alpha Omega system could choose a style that suits their hands/eyes.

If you are looking for a curriculum that is intentional in its inclusion of Scripture, poetry, and character-building quotes for its copy-work, as well as a scripted teacher's guide to help you along, this would be perfect for you. Quite honestly, this product probably isn't the best fit for my youngest, but again, could be a great fit for someone else. If Zaner-Bloser isn't your style of choice, you may wish to look elsewhere.

You can visit Alpha Omega's Social Pages:
Facebook, Google+ , Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Alpha Omega Publications
• Product: Horizons 2nd Grade Penmanship Set
• Ages: 2nd grade
• Price: $32.95

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say about this and other Alpha Omega Publications Products. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

Logical Handwriting course? CursiveLogic Workbook

One of my least favorite "subjects" in grade school was penmanship~ Because mine was never great, and almost always received an average grade of "C." As a result, I never pushed penmanship on my older two children, particularly when they were younger, and as long as I could read their work (which was sometimes a mix of manuscript and cursive). However, as time goes by, and they have needed to know how to write in cursive for at least some specific uses (like signing their name...), I have determined that they need to improve on what I have allowed. Very handy that CursiveLogic offered the CursiveLogic Workbook for review, just in time for my 14 year old to work on his handwriting. 

Yes, I know, I'm a little bit of an odd duck with my penmanship baggage, so I was pleased to see this workbook, which is fairly no-frills from a "cute" point of view, which is important when improving a teen boy's handwriting. It is also reasonably simple, so easy to use with a younger writer as well! 

The workbook is a combined teacher/student manual, with instructions and direction (Making it great for a self-directed teen). The first portion gives direction on preparing to write cursive (Grip, posture, etc...) that may very possibly be familiar. The rest of the beginning instructions discuss the philosophy and methods used by CursiveLogic. 

Two key features to the CursiveLogic method  

1.The letters are grouped by shape: Four basic shapes make up the entire alphabet. CursiveLogic teaches all of the similar letters in one lesson, greatly simplifying the learning process. This allows the student to reinforce the strokes that they have learned with each letter in the lesson. 

2.  Letter strings: Rather than teaching letters individually, CursiveLogic teaches all of the letters that share a common shape in a connected string. This allows the letters to reinforce each other and means students are writing in cursive from the very beginning.

Visual learners will find Color coding useful: Each letter string has a theme color that helps students remember the shape. The upper case letters are also grouped according to shape and stroke. 

And Auditory learners will benefit from the Catch phrases: CursiveLogic uses “verbal task analysis,” or saying an action verbally as it is performed manually, to aid the development of muscle memory and to give students a mnemonic they can return to over and over.

• Real words: Because CursiveLogic teaches a group of letters in a single lesson, students can write real words at the end of the first lesson. 
For some students, this immediate success is a huge motivator.

While my son, being older, didn't require the "hands-on" instruction, or the immediate success of writing 3-4 letter words, it was still very useful for him to have the tracing practice and the writing practice for each set of letters. 

The thought of writing his signature is no longer a terrifying thought, and if I can just get him to keep his writing to a scale that is readable (aka NOT ant-sized...), then this will have been a successful venture into the world of cursive. 

Oh, one more thing that is pretty nifty~ for practice purposes, there are some dry erase-ready pages at the back of the book for practice purposes, which may be VERY useful to the younger crowd. 

CursiveLogic is also making available to TOS Review Crew readers some free practice pages using Psalms and Government quotes. Check them out! :) Of course, they will work best after having learned all of the letters in logical order, via the CursiveLogic Workbook. 

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: CursiveLogic
• Product: CursiveLogic Workbook
• Ages: appropriate for ages 7-adult
• Price: $29

You can visit CursiveLogic Social Media sites: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

Logic of English (Rhythm of Handwriting - Cursive)

Logic of English offered a few different products to the TOS Review Crew for examination. Some of them received Foundations A (a 4-7 phonics, reading, writing, handwriting program) and others received Essentials (For ages 7+) as well as a Phonograms App. 

Based on the title of the company you *might* think that I have the wrong curriculum, when I tell you that I am reviewing the Rhthym of Handwriting (Cursive) curriculum.  However, I am here to remind you that writing is the other side of reading, and they both are part of that thing called "English." ;) 

Being totally honest here, I can say that handwriting has taken a very back seat in my homeschool. I hated "Penmanship" when I was in grade school, perhaps because I could NEVER manage an "A" no matter how much I tried! *an aside: I discovered later in life that my handwriting looks pretty much like both my mother's and my father's at various times, but neither are "Textbook" examples of script (Sorry, Mom and Dad, but facts are facts!). :) Because of my own perception, I had decided that there was really not much use in pushing handwriting and penmanship (including cursive), particularly with our increasingly digital age. 

I was not surprised to hear that schools were starting to drop cursive from their requirements, but when a hue and cry went forth it was time to sit up and notice. Suddenly there was a debate about learning cursive or doing away with it. As I read and researched, I decided that perhaps I had been doing my older children a disservice, and that cursive was a skill that they really should learn. The most salient points that swayed my decision, in no particular order:

screenshot of a portion of the Declaration of Independence

• The ability to read cursive, keeps primary source documents from becoming inaccessible. Imagine not being able to decipher an old diary or manuscript that is suddenly unearthed, not to mention the ability to read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. 

• Writing in cursive can help to minimize spelling mistakes as children more easily follow the correct left-right pattern, individual words are more obvious (no question where one word ends and the other begins, as is often the case in cramped manuscript writing), and there are muscle-memory patterns that are being forged, similar to those that a pianist learns through repetition of certain drills.

• Increased brain activity an retention of knowledge: "According to Virginia Berninger, a researcher and professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, "Pictures of brain activity have illustrated that sequential finger movements used in handwriting activated massive regions of the brain involved in thinking, language, and working memory. Handwriting differs from typing because it requires executing sequential finger strokes to form a letter, whereas keyboarding only involves touching a key.”

There are other benefits that are more geared to the younger child (Fine motor skills, ease of learning to mention a couple), but I was most interested in the above three as they relate to my 8th and 11th graders. 

The book does incorporate multi-sensory learning, which is excellent for younger students (Drawing in the air or with sensory materials in the sand, or shaving cream, etc...). There are also suggested schedules for those who want to try using this for ages 6 and under, as well as 3 varying schedules for those with children 7 and up. 

For my purposes in using this as a remedial course for my older students, I chose to follow the course of instruction, at an accelerated pace, and have my children write on the paper that Logic of English provides as a free download, which keeps the book for me to use with their younger brother at a more relaxed pace this fall. :) 

You can see that I got to practice my handwriting as well, since I wrote the initial letters, and the words for them to copy (When I take my time, I think my handwriting comes *close* to textbook, but it doesn't usually look like this when I'm rushing along;) ). 



Their "final" assignment was to write a verse of Scripture from dictation. :) 

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

I was very pleased with the approach of the Rhthym of Handwriting, as I used it for a remedial cursive course. I am confident that my eldest is able to read fluently and write adequately, and that my middlest, with a little more practice will be there as well. They will have the confidence and ability to "sign on the dotted line" for official documents and not have to resort to manuscript or a simple "X" like those who are not literate.

• Company: Logic of English
• Product: Rhthym of Handwriting Student book (Cursive) Rhythm of Handwriting Quick Reference Chart 
• Ages: 6+
• Price: $15 for student workbook, $10 for the chart

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say about this AND the other items I did not review. As always, I hope that this was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~