More handwriting q's: My 2nd grader just started cursive...

[Sue G in PA]

when should I start doing copywork for him in cursive? He's about halfway through the alphabet in terms of learning to write each letter. He does A Reason for Handwriting. Should I start NOW or when he has learned each letter? In the meantime, should his copywork still be in print? TIA

[Ali in OR]

I'm for waiting on cursive copywork. My dd is also second grade and we really just started cursive over the last couple of months. Fine motor skills aren't her strength, so it's pretty clear that for us she should just concentrate on learning the mechanics of cursive. For copywork, I want her to focus on how sentences are constructed and appreciate the beauty of excellent phrasing. I think that is better accomplished if she doesn't have to focus quite so much on the physical task of writing, so she prints. And truth be told, practicing printing and getting used to a gently ramping writing load is also a need here. We will focus on learning cursive this year and using it more next year.

[Narrow Gate Academy]

With my oldest, we only did cursive with no additional copywork. As soon as she had mastered a few letters, we did a combination of letters and words (using only the letters she knew). About halfway through the alphabet, I started to make up sentences with words using only the letters she knew. Some of them were quite forced, but DD found them funny. It only took us maybe a month to go through all of the letters, so I wasn't to concerned about taking a break from copywork to work on cursive. Once we finished all the letters, we started back up with cursive copywork.

HTH