Handwriting is the New Black

In an age of emails, and text messages, we are fighting back with some handwriting intensives this year. Most of what ends up delivered by the mailman to our front porch includes bills, ads for stores we never shop at, credit card offers, and mail for people who don’t live here. I imagine that is what most of your mailboxes look like too…on the rare, bright occasion that a handwritten card arrives, everyone in our house wishes it was for them, and eagerly awaits their own. It is pretty sad that we just don’t bother to write to anyone regularly anymore…and one of our yearly goals is to incorporate weekly letter writing.

Part of writing a letter, is of course, legibility. While beginning handwriting is cute, that only lasts for so long. And there aren’t always 4-year-old interpreters around to translate reversed letters and chicken scratch.

Vegas has been studying Spencerian Penmanship for a few years now. I bought it for him to use in second grade, and it made him weep and gnash his teeth…. given back to him a few grades later, he took off with it independently, and if you have ever gotten a card from him, you will have seen the results.

Not wanting to induce more weeping or gnashing of teeth, we are not starting off with Spencerian Penmanship in the early grades, rather we are using Peterson Directed, which is sort of a broken down, less fancy version of Spencerian. At the same time, it is dramatically different from using the ‘loop group’ type of cursive, which teaches individual letters, as opposed to basic strokes that can be used to build any letter, and can be practiced, mastered, and used in conjunction to form any combination of words.

So, if you want a letter, send us your address! You can email it to us directly at theharmonacademy@gmail.com.

Buying stamps, Shelley