Well, after me personally loving Peterson Directed Handwriting - I came to realize that we needed a change. Delta has been learning Cursive since Year 1 (starting with Cursive First, then adding in Pencil Pete, then changing to Peterson) - and whenever he needed to write anything other than copywork - he used a print that he was never taught. On top of it, I had been working with Echo on doing the cursive for Peterson for months and months - and was unable to get a legible letter from her.
So I started the research again.
Well, looking at Penny Gardner's book Italics: Beautiful Handwriting for children... the handwriting looked familiar. I remembered years and years ago, when I was about 10 - my mom had some book on calligraphy - but in it was how to write beautifully in your everyday writing. I realized that the "font" was very similar. I had taught myself that writing back then - and so my handwriting is a mish-mash of the cursive taught in school, and the italics I learned all those years ago.
I looked at the samples in the book, and the videos available from Penny Gardner's website- and liked the simple approach to teaching. It is very inexpensive, so we are giving it a try. The kids seem to like video lessons, so I'm letting Penny teach my children. We have done 3 lessons, and I'm happy to say that Echo is making beautiful, legible letters. Delta is happy with it too. I like that we can later add the joins to do an italic-cursive writing. We will have to see if this translates to better everyday writing.
I also found various other resources for italic handwriting. The other main resource the letters are formed slightly differently (and looks a bit nicer in my opinion...) but I'm happy with Penny Gardner's version. One great thing I found was a font (for the print version) - and a program that adds in the joins (for the cursive version.) - this will let me make my own copywork when desired.
So, here are the resources:
http://briem.net/ - the other main resource. Has things like desk strips, basic lessons, warm up's. Also the font/program. I can't link to the sub-pages, so explore it yourself. The font is under "The Italic Project", "Teaching Aids", "Software" - then look at each page under there to download, and get instructions on how to use it.
http://www.pennygardner.com/italicsbk.html - Penny Gardner's ebook to teach italics. This site also has links for the videos.
