Patriotic Penmanship

Do your children need more handwriting practice, but you want to avoid the ‘fluff' that traditional practice workbooks offer? Handwriting practice offers a magnificent opportunity to introduce children to quotes from sources such as great poems or hymns, Scripture verses, and famous statements from the great Patriots who formed our nation. Each book in this series holds 30 lessons that familiarize children with worthy words from U.S. history. To give you an idea of the type of quotes that are used: one of the 2nd grade book quotes is "Rely on our dear Saviour" (Andrew Jackson), and the high school book includes excerpts of Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech. In the instance that only part of a quote is used for penmanship practice, the rest of the quote is found at the top of the page, allowing children to learn the quote in context. This series con¬tains letter formation overview without complete instruction.

The Kindergarten book provides tracing practice, introductory vowel and con¬sonant sounds and then puts them together for beginning reading practice. For example: the b is introduced, then vowel sounds ba, be, bi, bo and bu. Then beginning words like bad, bat, bet, beg, etc. Elementary books (grades 1-2) are designed to reinforce manuscript practice, while grades 3 and up review cursive. Books are formatted similarly and provide a review of letters and key words before sentences are traced and practiced to prepare for the full quote. The Transition Book offers both manuscript and cursive letters prac¬ticed on each page, which allows children to see the relationship between manuscript and cursive letters. It is recommended for grades 2 and up. Handwriting Style is Modern/D'Nealian-like in the printing books, and modified Traditional in the Cursive Books.

In the books for Lefties, the content is the same as the right-handed grade- level book, but they are bound to be used sideways. This means those writers don't have to contend with the binding on the "wrong" side as they practice their handwriting. Afterall, they will have to adapt to this later in life! Extra Practice workbooks are simply a book of lined pages to use with Patriotic Penmanship so students have a place to copy the phrases for more practice. The phrases are not actually in these books. They have beautiful covers, looking like brown, tooled leather (but in paperback). Each has a section for practicing writing and addressing letters to people, which is lovely. Lines correspond to the print/cursive widths. All books contain lines with dotted centers, although the line width gradually decreases: 7/16" in 1st grade, 3/8" in grades 2-3, 5/16" in grades 4-5, and 1/4" in the 6th grade, Jr., and Sr. High books (approx). Non-reproducible, 62-82 pgs. pb. ~ Deanne