Ideas and resources
Do our children really need to learn cursive writing in today’s world? Um YES! I am a big believer in keeping things old school. Here is an interesting article outlining 5 important reasons why your children should continue to learn how to do cursive writing. Don’t worry though if your School decides to remove it from the curriculum then you can create your own writing sheets and teach your children at home.
I’m in deep denial about the fact that new year is almost upon us again! It’s been the fastest and the longest year at the same time, and I can look back and see some good things as well as some things I wish had gone differently.
Doing a year in review with your kids — whether in the classroom or at home — is a good way to capture some of their memories and the things they really liked about the year gone by.
There are a lot of different printable year in review worksheets you can use if you want to make this super easy. Here are links to a few (often part of larger posts about NYE celebrations with kids that are worth a read, too):
Of course you could pretty easily make your own year in review for the whole family to do that asks questions based on what you most want to remember. (Favorite video game? Best friend? Favorite family memory?)
And if after the year in review you’re ready to look ahead a bit, Mrs. Merry has new year’s resolution printables to inspired kids to look ahead and set goals for things they want to try. You can totally fill this one out as a grownup, too.
[Photo: Mrs. Merry]
Yes, I was very dismayed when I found out the schools around here stopped teaching cursive a decade ago. How are kids supposed to read historical documents, sign a check or contract?
Schools are dumbing down the kids now.
*rant* So americans are still writing cursive the same way it was written in the 18th century? Cos over here it has evolved. The cursive I learned in school in the 80’s is different from what my old aunt and grandma learned and that’s different from 19th c cursive, which is different from 18th c cursive. In fact, most in my and my parents’ generations struggle with 19th c cursive and find 18th close to impossible to decipher most of the time. My sis is into genealogy and she hates going back to the 18th c because it’s so hard to read the handwriting (not least since you have to keep in mind that we all have our personal style and that included the priests writing the documents). And she has spent several years reading old cursive. Kids can’t automatically read historical documents just because they can write in cursive (and, honestly how many adults have ever used their knowledge of it to read important documents themselves?). No, I don’t buy that argument.
Knowledge of old cursive is useful and, yes, calligraphy is beautiful. That doesn’t mean it needs to be mandatory in school, other things are much more important. I do however get the importance of signatures, one does still use that sometimes to sign documents, but it is possible to create a signature without being skilled at cursive. It doesn’t have to be legible to begin with. *end of rant*
As for what killed cursive, now that computers are being blamed, this is a good article: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballpoint-pens-object-lesson-history-handwriting/402205/