Cursive easier to learn than print
The summer that we planned the beginning of our homeschool journey with kindergarten, the occupational therapist told me I should teach my daughter cursive, not print.
I was surprised because my experience has been to save cursive for second grade because it was a difficult process to learn.
Isn’t cursive difficult enough for kids without developmental delays?
My daughter struggled with learning new things. How could she possibly learn cursive in kindergarten?
From her occupational therapist viewpoint she explained how much easier it is to learn cursive first.
Cursive is fluid wheras print has a lot of awkward starts and stops.
Goal to work across the midline with fluidity
Cursive works across the midline, which is extremely important developmentally.
Imagine a line running down from your nose to your belly button. That is the midline.
Some children never cross their midline.
That means that the right hand manipulates things only on the right side of their body, while the left hand only manipulates things on the left side of the body…as in when we type.
That is why learning to type is not an ideal activity for young children. Instead cursive is. While writing across a page in cursive the hand crosses one’s midline.
Children also learn quickly and easily.
Once they learn cursive, they will not have to learn print becomes it is learned naturally.
That was a lot for me to ponder. I even started praying about it! Can cursive really happen in kindergarten?
A Beka teaches cursive to kindergarteners
Not long after talking to the OT, I attended an A Beka open house one night to look at the kindergarten curriculum.
I loved the God-centered focus and the brightly colored pages.
Surprisingly their language arts program included…cursive!
They had quite compelling reasons, some that matched up with what the OT was saying. I was in.
Following are specific tips the OT gave to me which I found quite useful. I don’t remember exact details but I here are the general concepts:
Occupational Therapist Warm-up Tips
Following Maj Perry’s advice, we warmed up before every cursive lesson using Proprioceptive Sensory Integration Activities.
Proprioception relates to the messages the joints receive from pushing and pulling. If the weather was nice, we went outdoors for some fresh air to play on the playscape.
Climbing the stairs to slide down, and holding on to the chain while swinging provided proprioceptive input. If the weather was bad, we might do wheelbarrows.
Supporting their body with their hands sent messages to the shoulder joint.
Sending those messages to the shoulders is important before beginning the fine motor skill of cursive writing.
We may not realize it, but when we write with a pen or pencil, our shoulder is involved in a subliminal way.
Preparing the shoulder for the work ahead with warm up helps for the fine motor task of handwriting.
Write in the air with big movements
Now that the body has worked out some kinks, and the hands, arms, and shoulders are warmed up, we wrote in the air with our fingers.
Whatever the letter of the week was in phonics became the letter of the week in learning cursive.
I modeled writing the letter in the air, using the shoulder as the pivot point.
The entire arm becomes a giant piece of chalk. Only the shoulder moves, not the elbow.
The students follow, making repeated movements in the air with me, slowly but surely.
Practice at an easel
After some practice writing in the air, move to the easel.
The OT explained it is so much easier to keep the hand in a neutral position while writing on the easel than at a table, especially when one is left handed, like both my kids are.
Cursive under the table v on top of the table
The OT said we could even change things up by taping paper underneath a coffee table or children’s table, then letting the child crawl underneath to write on the paper.
It works like an easel, except in a different position.
Mixing things up are really great for brain development. I was always looking for ways to provide new input.
After lots of practice at the easel, we moved to the table top to practicue cursive.
Each week we learned a new letter.
Both of my kids learned this way. Both had great cursive. And sure enough, I never had to teach them print.
Epilogue 2024
When a vision therapist later saw my daughter’s cursive writing from kindergarten, he was flabbergasted. (From his office we had learned that she had convergence insufficiency with her eyes. More on that later.)
