Ready to start cursive

[dcjlkplus3]

My dd7 has beautiful printing (probably ball and stick style).
To learn printing we did manuscript writing books from Walmart and the dollar store and tracing pages and copywork.
I am ready to start teaching her cursive soon.
Cost is a factor. Also I tend to like just the basics, trace and write, and she did very well with that for printing.
Should I do the same thing, or get an actual writing program?

[Novafan]

My absolute favorite for cursive is Cursive Connections. It's inexpensive (just a simple copy book) that shows the proper form AND focuses on the connections between different cursive letters. It's been very a very successful method in our home.

[dcjlkplus3]

Novafan,
What age have you usually used that for and where did you get it?

[Mallory]

We started cursive this year. We started with thier names, since that "pretty" signature was something they were both interested. On the first day we did the first letter of thier name capital, then the second day was the next letter and connected to the first, ect.

Now we are working our way through the lower case letters, trying to include different kinds of conections, for sure with letters before and after. So far it is working well and is practically free, since we already had paper and pencils :D We have even been doing it on the same page as our copywork, and switching doesn't seem to bother them at all.

[sixpence1978]

My DS is learning cursive this year. We purchased a basic cursive writing book from Barnes and Noble for around $5. It's working out just fine, but to tell you the truth, my DS would probably learn it just fine with some pencil and paper.

I show him how to make the capital and lower case letter in cursive and then he will link the 2 of them together. We are making our way through the alphabet and then we will move on to words. He already knows how to write his name in cursive.

If anything, I highly recommend the StartWrite software. I has many different writing styles that you can make into worksheets for handwriting. I used this solely for teaching him manuscript and the start of cursive last year.

[dcjlkplus3]

Thank you all so much for your replies.
I think what it comes down to is that I will look for a workbook I like and go ahead and get started, pretty much I think we will be learning cursive the same way that we learned printing. I don't know why I felt like I needed permission to do that, but thank you for giving it.