Joy in the Ordinary

View Original

A Strategic Cursive Program :: CursiveLogic

See this content in the original post

CursiveLogic is a handwriting program with a strategic approach.  As you all may have read, cursive isn’t the easiest subject for our 7 year old.  She has a desire to learn and write cursive, but she struggles with producing some of the letters.  When the CursiveLogic Workbook became available for review, I knew we would give it a try.

The CursiveLogic Workbook is a spiral-bound soft cover book.  All of the instructions for teaching the program plus the exercises are housed in this high quality book.  The program is broken into four lessons which are based on the strategy for getting students in the swing of writing cursive.  The four lessons are then divided up into four sections.  The sections could be completed in one sitting or divided up over a course of a few days.  We chose to complete a section each day versus all of the sections in one day.  Before starting the lesson for the day, we implemented the recommended hand exercises.  Honestly, I had never thought about doing hand exercises before writing and now I think we will incorporate this into our learning regardless of if we are doing cursive or not. 

See this content in the original post

What is this strategy that I mentioned earlier?  The thing that makes CursiveLogic unique is the fact that letters are grouped together by shape.  So instead of going in alphabetical order, all letters that have an oval shaped are presented in a string of letters.  I have found that this helps my daughter to feel comfortable with creating the consecutive letters in the string.  There is also a catch phrase that accompanies each letter so if a child appreciates mnemonic devices this part of the strategy could help in building her cursive writing skills.   The uppercase letters are not taught as a part of the letter strings, but are taught separately.  This works since we only use uppercase letters for the beginning of sentences and proper nouns.  The majority of our writing is lowercase whether we are writing in print or in cursive.

See this content in the original post

Another area of the program I appreciate is the color coded theme.  Each string of letters has its own color.  For the most part, I am a plain person.  I do not chose curriculum based on if the pages are full colored or not, but I like that this book incorporated color.  My daughter is visual, and having the color has helped her differentiate between the letter groups.

After the four lessons have been completed, there are additional practice pages that hone in on writing complete words and sentences.  There are also several dry erase pages that can be used to reinforce skills once the program has been completed.  My daughter really likes the dry erase component of the workbook.

CursiveLogic is a strategic and sufficient handwriting program that can benefit any person over the age of 7 who desires to learn how to write in cursive. It is a great program to use if there is a need to solidify cursive writing skills (read: teenagers or anyone who has been exposed to cursive in the past, but still struggles with the concept.

See this content in the original post

 ©2009- 2015 A Little This... A Little That. All rights reserved. All photographs, text, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the author. http://lilthisandthat.com