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mary theresa
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| Posted: Jan 23 2009 at 2:29pm | IP Logged
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I could've sworn there was a previous thread on this, but I couldn't find it . . .
My daughter will be three in March. For a long time she has been interested in letters, asking me "what's this?" and pointing to one, etc.
I want to get her a set of sandpaper letters very soon. One thing i am agonizing over is: Lower-case Print? or lower case Cursive?
I'm biased toward cursive from my work as an assistant in a primary classroom -- for example, I love the way you don't lift your fingers up as much and also just the attractiveness of the cursive letters.
She will probably never attend a Mont. school and thus the other places that she will see/be exposed to letters in her life will be PRINT letters. I don't want to make her reading/recognizing letters limited to the sandpaper letters.
Can anyone help me on this? Obviously children at a Mont. school are going to be seeing cursive at school and print at home and in books? Is that a problem?
Thanks for your help! I just want to get the "right" kind! 
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Mary Theresa
mother to 3 little girls --March '06, Dec '07 and Jan '10
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Maryan
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| Posted: Jan 23 2009 at 3:46pm | IP Logged
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Mary Theresa I don't have a good answer, but I have my answer.
I learned cursive in third grade. I had no trouble in school with writing, taking notes, etc.
So I plan to do the same with my kids -- print first and then cursive.
So no great deep reasons, just mine. 
And the only reason that I'm teaching them cursive is that I think it's faster to take notes in cursive. And even that reason may become obsolete if technology becomes even more prevalent.
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Maryan
Mom to 6 boys & 1 girl: JP('01), B ('03), M('05), L('06), Ph ('08), M ('10), James born 5/1/12
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Mackfam
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| Posted: Jan 23 2009 at 4:45pm | IP Logged
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Mary Theresa - I'm using capital sandpaper letters. I don't have a great reason to offer you. It was just what I went with.
I know there was a whole thread that we talked about cursive letters with MontessoriLori's input...I'll see if I can find it later.
I really like the red letter/blue number books from Montessori Services and have been debating them for some time. I will probably purchase these when my little guy shows real interest in letters. Just thought I'd throw that option out there because some kids really have an aversion to the sandpaper feel.
I know Donna Marie made her own out of felt I think, or maybe glitter glue? I'll see if I can hunt that one down for you, too.
Hopefully, MontessoriLori will chime in.
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19 , ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
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mooreboyz
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| Posted: Jan 23 2009 at 4:53pm | IP Logged
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I started my oldest 3 with capital print as that was found in most abc books we had. My 4th I started with lower case printed because as I read in some teaching kids to read book most of what we read is in lower case. This seemed to work better when it came time to start sounding out letters. I had considered cursive with him, but went with print because I think it helps with early reading.
As a sidenote, Jennifer, I got those books from Montessori Services for my youngest for christmas and he really likes them. We've only really gone through numbers so far; but, he really likes touching/tracing them. I recommend them to you for when yours is 18 mos-2 years.
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Jackie
7 boys - 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 15, 17 years
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CatholicMommy
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| Posted: Jan 23 2009 at 8:08pm | IP Logged
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There is this HUGE debate about which is better/easier/more applicable to real life.
Just throwing in my own 2 cents: Maria Montessori figured out herself (ok, the children showed her!) that to learn lower case cursive at first is certainly more natural (look at their "scribbles"!) - but the children will make a natural connection to the print letters. There is an anecdote in one of her books that I cited for my language exam in the training, the name of which escapes right now.
But the gist is that she was worried about teaching them print because she'd only given them cursive letters and their mothers had asked her to teach them how to "read" - and she had inadvertently shown them how to WRITE, but not necessarily to read. However, 1) they suddently started reading each other's writing and 2) some of the children went inside one day and were reading the names of the months and days and other information off of a wall calendar, that was all in Gothic print.
Now I've not looked at Gothic print (not sure how reliable Microsoft Word's version is), but it was certainly different enough from the cursive that she was 1) confounded and 2) overwhelmingly relieved.
(more than my 2 cents????)
My son learned lower case print first, but quickly switched over to cursive when I learned about the whole cursive/print thing. When he started writing, it was all capital print (HUH!?). To this day I don't get it, but he did eventually switch to cursive and now he attends a part-time non-Montessori preschool where cursive is like forbidden fruit and he has no troubles reading what the teacher's have written - he does comment that the other children do not know how to write (his version for "it's sloppy") - but they are just now learning and he's been writing for about a year and a half now, and his writing (while not nearly as big as some of the other children's) did used to be larger and sloppier!
In the end, go with your instinct. Cursive IS more natural but it's not the be-all, end-all.
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4Real Forums : Nurturing the Years of Wonder
Topic: Which kind of SP letters?
