If you have read our reviews before you may know that we use Italic Handwriting for our handwriting lessons in English class. I really like this workbook because the writing is very nice and neat. As the title suggest the letters are slightly italicized. Instead of writing in the booklet itself I put a sheet protector over them so that we can reuse the curriculum as many times as we like. We typically go through the book multiple times before moving onto the next one. Doing this allows our daughter to get more practice in then just doing every page one time. Italic Handwriting Books A and B have the kid friendly paper with the special lines for when kids are just starting out with writing. This installment has the same kind of lines to write on but they get smaller as you go through the book. This way the child can transition into writing without having a top, middle and bottom line. When you first start with Book C there is a pre-test so that you can asses where your child is at before using the book. Below that is a post-test to do after you are done with the workbook.
I like that they have a bit of a review at the beginning with the first few pages being over letter families. So, they will practice the letters that are written in a similar way. Then your child will practice the lowercase letters followed by the uppercase versions. There is a little section to practice writing numbers both with the number itself and the written out version. There is not a lot of room for practicing these so this is were using the sheet protector come in handy so we can reuse the page many times. What I think is cool is that there is a days of the week, months of the year and a seasons of the year section. Our curriculum kit never had a way to teach these so I used a calendar for it. But it is nice to see these concepts appear in things that we get. There are lots of practice pages and some even include fill in the blank practice. Around the middle of the Italic Handwriting Book C they introduce cursive!
There is not a lot of practice of each letter on their own in cursive but since you only add a tail for the letters to connect it makes sense why you would not need to practice them for very long. I have notice that with this way of cursive not all of the letters connect when they are writing bigger words. Some letters do and some do not. The writing itself is still very nice but I always thought that when doing cursive the letters all flow onto the next one. That being said looking at Book D it seems that they are just getting an initial introduction to cursive and that if you continue on with Italic Handwriting, which we are doing, they learn to connect all the letters. At the very end of Book C they show you that another form of cursive is to have your letters have a loop in them. There is not practice on these and I am just fine with that. I would highly recommend this workbook. However, if you get it I suggest using a sheet protector so that yo can reuse it to get more practice in. The company does not allow for the photocopy of the pages or I would have done that. What handwriting curriculum do you use?
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