How to Teach a Child Cursive Writing in 8 Easy Steps

When a child is able to recognize, read and write the alphabet in a simple manner you can easily teach him to write in the cursive style, a pencil grip is an important lesson for children. learning cursive writing as it is a flowy style and requires a strong grip overwriting tools. If your child's grip over the pencil is not strong help him to write while holding his hand in the beginning but don't make it a habit.

Cursive writing comes with some interesting patterns which make learning easy, for beginners. Start teaching your child with these patterns before jumping straight into cursive alphabets or words, there are a total of 12 cursive patterns which you can teach the child using a four-row notebook. Practice tracing these patterns by providing worksheets to children.

• The first pattern is a loop pattern in the first three lines of the notebook
• The second pattern is the same loop pattern in the middle two lines
• The third pattern doesn't have any loop and lies in the first three lines
• The fourth pattern is the same as the third but lies in the middle two lines
• The fifth pattern has an inverted loop in the first three lines
• The sixth has an inverted loop in the middle two lines
• The seventh is an inverted loop pattern but bigger and lies in the first three lines.
• The eighth is the same as the seventh one but lies in the middle two lines.
• The eighth loop is an inverted pattern in the first three lines
• The tenth is an inverted loop in the middle of two lines
• The eleventh is a c pattern in the middle two lines
• The twelfth is an o pattern in the middle two lines.

After the child is fully trained in patterns, start the second step by introducing lower case alphabet groups. place similar letters in the same group for a child to better understand the cursive alphabets technique. There are four categories of Cursive Writing.

Clock Climbers

Cursive alphabets (a,d,g,q,c) are placed in clock climbers as they have the same pattern of writing.

Kite String

These cursive alphabets have patterns like kite's string, ( I,u,w,t,j,p,r,s,o). Thus they are placed in this family.

Loop Group

Cursive alphabets ( h,k, b,f,l,e) are placed in the loop family due to the same pattern.

Hills & Valleys

Cursive alphabets ( m,n,v,x,y,z) are placed in this family.

Teach your kid cursive alphabet families step by step. Start with clock climbers when the kid fully adapts to this family then move on next and complete all alphabets through these groups. Provide worksheets to children for practicing alphabet groups.

Introduce lowercase letters first before starting with uppercase letters, lowercase letters are more widely used in writing than uppercase. You can teach one letter at a time this will help in retaining writing skills much better than providing multiple letters at a time. In beginning provide a tracing sheet to trace a single cursive alphabet then jump to writing multiple cursive alphabets, when the child finishes all the cursive alphabet then provide him the sheet and ask him to write a-z in cursive style.

The child has now acknowledged all lowercase cursive alphabets and is able to write them, now with the same procedure teach him uppercase alphabets.

Once a child is familiar with writing both upper and lower case letters in a cursive style, then introduce blending letters into words using cursive handwriting. If you will able to teach the above-mentioned steps clearly and the kid is able to retain those steps then writing words will be an easy task for your little one. Start with small words with starting sound of alphabets from a- z.

You can provide kids with a worksheet containing words like A- ant, B- bat, C- cat, D-dog, and so on.

After making a grip on word writing, it will be easy for kids to make sentences and use them in paragraphs. once your child is able to write words in a confident manner using cursive handwriting step forward to teach him to write sentences and paragraphs in cursive writing. Start with small sentences like

• This is my cat.
• Cat is fat
• The dog is brown

You can jump into writing paragraphs once your child grips command of sentences.

While teaching your child cursive writing make sure to invest your time in his learning process to get instant results, often parents provide kids worksheets with some verbal guidance and ask them to follow. Kids are easily distracted by their own thoughts and convert their attention to other things while learning. While kids are doing their tasks parents must look after them. In this way, you cannot just prevent them from distracting but also teach them in the most suitable way if they make a mistake during writing.

"The more you practice the better you get"

The above quotation will help in how to write in cursive and how to learn cursive writing. Practice is the key step if you are wondering about how to teach cursive writing to a kindergarten or an adult. The more you will practice your child by tracing and writing in cursive, the better you get results. But remember each child is different from others, abilities and development differ from child to child.

It is possible that some children learn really fast and some take time to pick up things. Move according to your kids' pace and abilities. If a child is a slow learner then teach him steadily instead of creating a rush. Be consistent and kind enough to the child in practicing and learning cursive writing.