I need to teach cursive this year and I'm wondering what will be the easiest way?

So tell me the programs you've tried and loved (or hated). I'd love to hear from various sources.

Thanks!

Handwriting without tears.  I'd use this again in a flash. 

Teaches a simple pretty cursive.  Not so loopy as some yet more cursive than italic.  Many folks love italic but I found that my sons couldn't read cursive. The bility to read others cursive was important.

Now if anyone can tell me the secret to getting my sons to actually want to use the georgeous handwriting that I just KNOW is in there.  Let me know.  LOL! 

It's so funny....I never thought of using a curriculum to teach cursive.  I just figured when the time was right for my boys I woudl teach them.  And just do it my way!  LOL  :)  My oldest learned out to write his name in cursive last winter after begging me for weeks.   I didn't want to jump the gun, but when he kept after it, I figured he is the type that learns something and moves on and is ready for the next challenge.  Now with my youngest, it will be a challenge to get him to write letters correctly, but that is okay! :)

I have used Christian Light Education and A Reason for Handwriting.  We really liked both.  The Christian Light had a bunch of "animal" stories.  One of my dd is a major animal lover and just loved practicing writing. 

GL!

My son never developed a hand preference, so he had a lot of OT, and our OT said Handwriting Without Tears and for me to not teach print at all.  So that's what we did.  We went straight to cursive.

We've used Handwriting Without Tears, and it works wonderfully well.

HWT is great!!!!!!

I just used whatever I was taught in school. My daughter's printing is horrendous, and as soon as I am sure she is confident in cursive, I am going to teach italics. It's legible, pretty, and pretty easy to master the strokes.

Has anyone ever taught cursive and print at the same time?

I'm surprised no one mentioned this. The good thing about this one is you only teach it once. Then it seems to flow together . .. .its not italic and its not block print.

bfhhandwriting.com/index.php

Yep, Handwriting Without Tears is great, for printing as well as cursive.  By the way, I have teacher's guides for printing, for the levels of kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade.  All my cursive books have been requested already.

~Jori

We just started HWT.  It does look wonderful.  I love the ways it shows them how to connect the letters and the teacher book has some great advice.  We started with "grade 3" but it is not labeled as such, so my 4th grader won't even know. I also liked how she said traditional cursive paper looked confusing with lines and dashes.  I'd always thought so, but thought it was just me.

I use ABeka Writing w/phonics 1 cursive

When I homeschooled my girls we used the Italic Handwriting Series by Barbara Getty.  I even did it with them.  She has books for all ages.  They learn Italic not that hard and then when it comes time for cursive it is so easy , just a few small changes with some letters and simply joining others.  The all three still have beautiful handwriting that gets many compliments and they are in their early 30's and mid twenties.  The funny thing was as they were all doing it for a while their hand writing all looked alike and they got a big kick out of being able to forge each others names for a while. 

We've used Handwriting Without Tears for four years now and LOVE it.

http://www.hwtears.com

I've seen some of the books posted on PBS.  I listed a Teacher's Guide once.

Julie C.

Our family loves HWT for manuscript and cursive. Once my children have finished with the first cursive book we then move on to A Reason for Writing book E (cursive). Bob Jones is an easy to use program too.

We have used "A Reason for Writing" , an Italic handwriting program,and Handwriting Without Tears.My son chose the italic program.My oldest daughter used "A Reason for Writing" and my youngest daughter is using HWOT for cursive.

My daugther struggled so much with picking up cursive using "A Reason for Writing" that I switcehd her to Handwriting Without Tears. In  my opinion, Handwriting Without Tears is easier to do than others I have seen. I think the handwriting is prettier in" A Reason for Writing" and I would have continued with it if she didn't struggle so much. But she is learning HWOT without a struggle.

Which is best depends partly on preference. You and your child may find the style of a particular program more appealing. But as far as ease of writing, I think HWOT is the easiest. But I don't think it is necessarily the prettiest style. For a child that struggles with writing I would use HWOT.

If your child does not struggle with handwriting than you may want to look around for the one that is visually the most appealing to you.

About "pretty" styles.  Don't forget everyone ends up with their "own" cursive.  While HWT may look odd, the student ends up with their own style anyway.

JC

I use Donna Young's printables right now and it seems to be working.  My son's cursive is better than his print.

Handwriting without tears is JUST THAT!    My DD is zooming through the cursive program and DS (6) who HATED writing, and had terrible hard to read writing, is doing very well!  He still doesn't love it, but he doesn't try to hide when I bring out his writing book.  His writing is improving dramatically since we started the first grade program.  Even my preschooler likes it!

This is great!  Thanks for sharing all this info.  We have just used various workbooks from the dollar tree, I wasn't aware of all these programs so I will have to look into them.  Thanks everyone! :) Linda

J.C. C. said "about pretty styles, everyone ends up with their own style of cursvie anyway" 

I agree. But if you learn cursive with an italic program I think your own style that develops is going to be different than if you learn cursive using something like "A Reason for Writing" or  "Handwriting Without Tears". But whatever you learn with, I do think it is true that you are going to go off into your own style.

I also like HWT but my son started to protest it for some reason. We used it for printing just fine for 3 yrs. We switched to ELP Learning to Write Cursive and for some reason he likes it better-no idea why but whatever works!

I've been using Pentime (bought it at Rainbow Resource for about $5.50 per bk) for my daughter which she loves so I went ahead and got the cursive book for her to start soon. I like how it has tracing and builds up the copywork for practice.