easy to teach, easy to learn, no flair printing and cursive

by Guinever
(Lexington, KY)

Product: Handwriting without Tears
Subject: Printing and Cursive
Levels Used: pre-K through 5th grade
Dates Used: 2004-present

Likes: I've started 3 children with this printing from the very beginning. Currently, I have a pre-K, 2nd grader and 4th grader (but doing the new 5th grade printing book).

Letters and Numbers for Me (the K or equivalent book) is great. Written by an occupational therapist to address kids with learning problems, this program helps kids to overcome letter reversals or to prevent them from starting them at all.

I don't know if other programs teach letters in a similar order but this is just a genius! (I'm remembering my school days of learning the letters in alphabetical order) The teacher's manual offers fun ways to teach with simple games. My kids love the "magic c" letters.

I have both sizes of slates--for beginning capital letters and then the bigger slate with lines for printing upper and lower case words). We have the wood pieces which are just great for multi-sensory learning.

I think the books are priced not too expensively, but I think the wood pieces could be about $10 cheaper.

Dislikes: I really wish they would make copy work books. Their paper design (the lines) are so different from everyone else that it confuses young children trying to write on other paper. I would really like to see them publish classic type copy books (with poetry, Latin, Scripture, etc) or release the rights for others to publish notebooking pages or books.