I have been collecting some links lately that I think are worth sharing, and since we are spending the morning visiting our county fair, I thought I’d put this up on autopost {I love the autopost function} and direct you to where the reading is good.
Here they are, in no particular order:
- Willa discusses teaching Cursive First. Before this, she discussed cultural literacy. Her blog is always worth reading, by the way.
- The above led me to an article by Samuel Blumenfeld that argues for teaching cursive first. I was especially interested to read that it helps the left-handed, as Neighbor M. is a lefty.
- Over at another of my favorite blogs, the author discusses parenting sensitive little girls. I have one. Do you? I really want to avoid raising a girl who becomes easily hurt and holds grudges. This post offered me some solid biblical direction.
- I am trying to learn to instruct mimetically. This article was a good primer.
- Do you ever read Anthony Esolen? You should. His recent post Choice, the Dragon is not to be missed. And he quotes Josef Pieper!
Happy reading!
5 Comments
Thanks for the links, Brandy! I printed out the Mimetic one. And I love Esolen’s writing, too.
I haven’t read the post yet on the cursive first but I am doing it here with my 7 yod. She’s my 3rd. Part of the reason I did it is because she was attempting to write in cursive like her older siblings and was beginning to form huge habits. Handwriting habits are very hard to break (as my oldest has proven to be with her manuscript.) Anyway, my 7 yod loves it. We’re going very slow with it but she’s just is slow mode with everything. I haven’t decided if I will do cursive with my now 4 yod. He’s beginning to ask though. Thanks for the link. I can’t wait to read it.
Yes, I don’t want to be so accustomed to boys that I don’t catch my daughter’s needs and issues. 🙂 It’ll be a trick, I think. It’s hard to not treat her the same as I am used to parenting boys so far. I can definitely tell discipline hurts her feelings more than the boys, and it takes a little more hug-time afterward for her to get over it.
I had the same question about cursive-first as you asked Willa. I don’t want to buy a different program; I just want to use what I have to print off my own things. I had heard of this a couple years ago and thought, “Oh, well, why not?” and made Hans some cursive sheets when he was early-5. He could trace them, and he liked them, and sometimes he still tries to draw connector lines. I stopped because he writes so much on his own in his free time and so it seemed like I should work with him on writing individual letters and starting at the top and all that. I don’t know. He didn’t transfer practicing cursive to his free-time writing, and I wanted his free-time writing to be more legible (which it is now), and it seemed like if he did try making cursive his free-time writing, he’d get bad habits about how to connect letters. He already has very ingrained bad habits on letter formation because he’s been writing letters since he was 3. If I had reluctant writers I’d probably jump on board, but my second son likes writing letters too. He’s benefiting from the more formal school time because he’s getting more instruction like “start at the top” and learning better letter formation than Hans did. So, I’m thinking I might hold out until second grade but switch to cursive before or when I have him copying sentences. Right now we’re working on individual letters.
And, the nice thing about Italics is that the shapes of the letters are the same in print and cursive, so the transition is easier. So, Blumenfeld’s point about loopy being easier doesn’t apply to Italics, about which I will not be dissuaded. 🙂
You will have to let me know what you think about the cursive first if you read the article. I am seriously considering it.
How early? Oh, around the time she turned two I was pretty sure. It became very evident that she was (successfully) manipulating us with her emotions in general. Having a boy first meant it wasn’t obvious to us. Boys are so in-your-face when it comes to their sin (generally speaking) and so we weren’t looking for these sneaky, hidden issues.
Now I know for sure. Most everything hurts her feelings. She often accuses others of having bad motives, like they were hurting her on purpose. She is slower to forgive, and more likely to bring up things that she claimed she had already forgiven. That sort of thing.
I am pretty sure that our girls are different in this regard, for the other one reminds me more of me, just generally less emotional, but we will see how she develops as she grows.
Yay, thanks. 🙂 I’m especially interested in the cursive first stuff.
How early did you realize you had a sensitive girl? I’m watching mine, but I’m not sure I can tell yet. She does scrape her knee outside and cry less than the boys, but she can also be pretty panicky.