My 9-year-old's penmanship is not always legible. As a
kid diagnosed with ADHD, the patience and fine motor required to print nicely,
just aren't there. When his school teacher mentioned cursive on parent
curriculum night, I cringed.
My options were watch him struggle or decide that it
wasn't important. I wasn't comfortable with either. My son loves history and if
he ever stands in front of the Declaration of Independence, I want him to be
able to read it.
To begin working on cursive at home, I first wanted to
test his familiarity with the lowercase letters. He was exposed to cursive last
year, but I wondered what his recollection was. I made a set of four pages for
our pegboard (find out how I made it here). Download the 4-page PDF here. This is the first of a series of activities I have planned for him.
The pages require him to match up lowercase manuscript letters with
their cursive counterparts. The matches are indicated by stringing rubber bands
on the nails from one to the other.
Can't be bothered to make a pegboard? Print my pages,
slip them in plastic sheet protectors, and hand kids a fine-tip dry-erase
marker to draw lines!
I've said it before, but what I love about these pegboard
practice pages is that kids have options. It's like taking a multiple choice
test. At first my son incorrectly matched the cursive r with the manuscript n, but
later was able to see when the remaining letters didn't match, that he'd made
an error.
