Little Homeschool on the Prairie: CursiveLogic Review

Recently, I received the CursiveLogic Quick-Start Pack and The Art of Cursive. I was thrilled to get a chance to use CursiveLogic with my 15 year old daughter with special needs.

CursiveLogic is a result of Linda Shrewsbury who was inspired by a 23 year old young man with special needs she was tutoring. One day this young man asks her, “Could you teach me cursive so I can sign my name?” Linda Shrewsbury was touched and determined to find away to help Josh. How do you teach someone cursive who doesn’t even have the foundation that is taught for years to learn the skills to write with cursive handwriting? After looking at the paper with cursive on it she saw four distinct patterns that she calls oval, loop, swing, and mound. Well the rest is history and she realized it could be used as a solid foundation in mastering the skills to teach cursive to others.

CursiveLogic is for ages 7- and up. The workbook is consumable and intended for use with one child.

CursiveLogic Quick-Start Pack~

This package has one workbook of CursiveLogic and the Instructional Webinar for this unique cursive program.

The CursiveLogic Workbook:

This is a softbound spiral workbook that lays out flat when using. My favorite type of workbook!

CursiveLogic Workbook is both the student and teacher workbook and it does have everything you need to teach the method to your student in 10 lessons (112 pages). Throughout the lessons you have important teaching helps with the letters and the letter strings. In the back of the workbook you have 14 extra practice pages and 3 dry-erase.

The lower case letters are grouped by shape. This means all the letters that have a similar shape are taught together. There are four groups of shapes that are taught. The first group is the oval which is also color coded in orange. The letters are: a, c, d, g, q, and o in this group. It teaches letter strings instead of focusing on an individual letter. Not only are they learning the shape of the letters but, they are also learning how to connect the letters immediately. When you start writing words you already know how to connect them to form words.

Each of the four groups of shapes has its own color. At the beginning of each lesson you learn the beginning stroke of each letters first (a, c, d, g, q, and o). Then you practice the second stroke.

The last step is joining the first two steps together to form a letter and then you create a string of letters.

Upper-case letters are also divided into six groups based on where you start the formation of the letter. They don’t flow as easy as the lower-case letters. It does have a decent rhythm to it.

I really appreciate the layout of how the program works and that each lesson is in the same format.

I always tend to look at the space provided for writing in. Overall, this has ample space. My daughter writes really large due to her arthritis she has a hard time when she needs to write smaller and trying to form letters in a smaller area.

The lessons are set up for 4 days. Like I mentioned you have 10 lessons total. The first couple of lessons focus on the lower-case letters and then you have a several lessons devoted to capital letters. The average lesson is anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes.

This is a revised edition and it does have all the same material as the first edition. The core is the same and the catch phrase is still used while teaching the letter string formation, and real words, along with finger tracing. They have added some helpful additions to assist in your teaching; the layout of the workbook has changed some to increase the function of it. There is also now more practice space available. Another addition is that the capital letter section is expanded.

Instructional Webinar:

The Webinar runs around 50 minutes in length. It’s a step by step method of how to use the program. I would recommend you have your workbook with you while watching it. You can watch with or without your student. There is a lot of detail in the video and many visual examples that are done on a whiteboard and on examples from the workbook. It's very informative and is worth the time spent watching the webinar.

The Art of Cursive:

This is also a consumable workbook and is intended for one student to use. It is recommended that you use this after you have completed the CursiveLogic Workbook. Not something you would hand over to someone just learning cursive if you want to take advantage of the intriguing practice of your skills you just learning in CursiveLogic Workbook.

I love the details with the cursive letters being used in the coloring pictures.

I like to think of it as an adult coloring book that has the letters to form the pictures. The pages are fairly thick and I don’t imagine you will see much bleed through with it. It’s on a two page layout. One page has a quote that you can trace and then there is space provided to copy the quote yourself. The other page is the coloring page. There are 27 beautiful designs to color.

How did I use CursiveLogic in my homeschool?

I used this the first time with my son who was just learning cursive and I was pleased with the results of CursiveLogic.

Now, I’m going through this for a second time with a student who knows cursive. Her handwriting is beautiful. It wasn’t always that way and I honestly thought that it may be futile to keeping trying to get her to write in cursive. After many tears and a lot of years all the hard work paid off. Regardless, we still struggle with remembering the formation of the letters. I keep a chart in her folder to help her. Due to her Autism and other special needs she regresses and forgets how to start them. My hope with CursiveLogic is that this unique program will help her with memorizing her letters with its multisensory approach.

I watched the Instructional Webinar myself over three days. I have looked it over a few other times to make sure I recalled some of the information. I was excited to get started with Bug. She wasn’t too excited to start a cursive program since she learned it a few years ago. I showed her the both of the workbooks. I think she was really intrigued with the The Art of Cursive book. It gave her incentive to do the CursiveLogic Workbook.

Surprisingly she loved the finger tracing and using the color pencils with each lesson. I didn’t expect that with her. She insisted on using the color pencil during the whole lesson.

Bug's early handwriting using the CursiveLogic method.

I asked Bug to write down the letters by herself using the first letter string in the oval shape. She did this by herself without me helping her! She even did the catch phrase out loud when she was doing it!

At first Bug wasn’t sure that she liked the letter strings and how they would help her remember the letter formations down the road. Trust me; she let me know that several times. By the third lesson she informed me that she does like the pattern of the letters and thinks it may help remember things about how each letter looks visual and how the groups look somewhat alike. Time will tell; as she does well for several months and then regresses with some letters.

We have a few more lessons left. Most lessons we could finish in the 4 day schedule. With my daughter’s arthritis being so bad in her hands we had to work around her arthritis some days. I would have her write a letter string on paper or the dry-erase in the back of the workbook. Other days I would just have her do the finger tracing. I expected her to go slower than most kids doing the program. She is not fussing about lessons and I feel that she is liking it.

We haven’t done the The Art of Cursive yet as its going to be her reward for finishing the workbook. She is looking forward to it and making sure that I haven’t colored in several times!

CursiveLogic is a unique cursive program. I have seen the results with my son and I know it works. I would highly recommend it for beginning cursive learners and for kids with special needs.