Until recently, we have been quite pleased with the curriculum of our kids’ elementary school, with one exception: cursive handwriting.

All of my kids have been taught from a program that was created to help make cursive very easy for the kids to write. I won’t name names, but this particular program essentially teaches children to put curls at the end of their printed letters in order to connect one with the next, all without any need for slanting. Well, fine, so they can now write in pseudo cursive, but the critical problem with that came when my son reached junior high. He complained that he could not read his teachers’ handwritten assignments on the board because several wrote in traditional cursive. Qs and Zs and a few other letters didn’t look at all familiar to him.

So, being crafty, I made him a flash card of old school cursive to tuck into his binder to get him by. My girls start junior high next year and I think it’s past time I took matters into my own hands.

I have looked tirelessly online for workbooks that I can use with the kids at home that teach traditional (slanted and with loops) cursive. The best I could find was a 1956 Handwriting Grade Four workbook found on ebay. I’ll just have to make up my own program from parts of that. The kids all seem open to the idea, and that’s the biggest hurdle.

In the meantime, I made up some more flashcards for my kids and wanted to share the image with you. Click on the blackboard for a JPG image that will fit and 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper, or reduce like I did and create smaller ones on cardstock that fit better (and are less conspicuous) in the kids’ binders. Laminate if you can.