Channie's Visual Handwriting & Math Workbooks Review

The girls have begun to learn cursive handwriting. I think all kids should learn how to write and read cursive. So much of our history is written in cursive and everyone needs to have a nice readable signature. We have tried several different books and so far the one by Channie’s Visual Handwriting & Math Workbooks has been our favorite. It is called Easy Peasy Cursive and is geared for grades 1st to 3rd.

This is a very simple cursive workbook, it has around 80 pages. It is bound on the top so it is great for left handed kids. No binding fight for the lefties. I have both a left and a right handed child. Both feel that the top binding is easier to write in. I consider this a great starter cursive book. The lines are quite large for an older child. It has angled guidelines to help them keep the proper slant to each letter. It has this green shaded area to help them remember where the lower case letters go. The letters are simple and do not contain flourishes and extra curls. 

My 5th grader wanted to try this book. Their was a bit of a squabble over it. So we used the tried and true method of coin flipping to see who got to try it out. She flipped a coin with my 3rd grader and apparently won. She has been excited to learn cursive. Her grandma had beautiful cursive writing and she has always wanted to learn to write like her. She has been doing one page a day with out a lick of complaining. It does not take her very long to complete a page around 10

min or so. She does some time get some blank binder paper and do a little extra practice. She has reported back that the pages are easy to follow and the arrows and number on each letter were great in showing her which part to make first and what direction to make the lines. She is very quickly picking up how to form each letter correctly. I did receive a few complaints about the lines being so big. But both my girls frequently complain when writing pages use big lines. They feel the bigger lines make their writing look sloppy. They just do better on college ruled paper. But that is just a preference that my kids have. Like I said above once she has practiced in this book and gets the hang of how to form each letter she will change over to favorite type of paper. Take a look at the pictures I have included it will give you a great idea of whats in the book and some samples of how my daughter is doing.




Over all we are both happy with this writing book. I would buy this book for any child that is just starting out with cursive. Be sure to click the banner below and Read what the Other Crew Members are saying about Channie's Visual Handwriting & Math Workbooks.

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Everyday Education, LLC Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting Review

For the last couple of months we have had the pleasure of using Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting by Everyday Education, LLC. This is a very simple step by step program that you can use to teach your child to read as well as how to write beautifully. You can use this program as your primary reading and handwriting program or as a supplement. We chose to use it as a handwriting supplement. The program consist of 60 lessons and is phonics based. It starts with Italic handwriting that progresses from straight to a slant and joined writing. It comes in both a downloadable version or a printed/bound physical book that has 218 pages.

We received the downloadable version of Perfect reading, Beautiful Handwriting. Currently the price for the downloadable version is $27.00. We chose to use this mainly as a handwriting supplement since both of the girls are already reading. The program is easy to download and navigate. It comes with some easy to follow basic instructions on how to use it. The writing pages start out with straight letters and progress on to slanted and then joined lettering. Chapters 1-5 are phonics based lessons and start out with straight writing. Chapter 6 is the handwriting chapter. In this area is where all the handwriting magic happens. Chapter 6 covers all of these handwriting areas.

• Different Ways Italic Can Look 170
• Using This Chapter 172
• “The Night Before Christmas” Copywork 174
• Slanted Letters 180
• Trace, Copy, and Finish 186
• Reproducible Guide Sheet: Slanted 187
• Writing in a Smaller Size 188
• Reproducible Guide Sheet – Smaller Size 189
• Joining Letters Together 190
• Joining Practice 192
• Using the Edged Pen 196
• Adding Serifs 200
• Reproducible Guide Sheet for Edged Pen 203
• Variations 204
• Joined Writing with an Edged Pen 208

We skipped ahead a little to the slanted lettering because the girls were already writing straight lettering fairly well. We did lessons about three days a week. I found this one chapter to be enough to improve the girls letter formation and they are beginning to understand how to connect the letters. Some pages we have printed more than once for additional practice. I still have to watch my lefty because she tends to start letters from right to left for some reason but over all we are seeing some slow improvements with her writing.

The first 5 chapters are the phonics chapters while we did not use these specifically I did look through them. I liked the way it was laid out the simplicity was nice and the instructions for teaching it were easy to understand. The phonics are very basic and great for a beginner just learning how to read. It makes it nice that they are learning how to write at the same time they are learning phonics. Buy combining both it is a great time saver and its nice to combine things when ever possible. 

If you click the banner below you can read how some of the other Homeschool Review Crew members used the phonics portion of the program.

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