Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Handwriting is a continuous stroke, modern style handwriting system for grades K-4. Studies continue to show that even in our modern computer age, handwriting is still foundational and an important motor skill.
Beginning with kindergarten, the Starter Level teaches strokes top/bottom, over/under/through, left to right, curved and line strokes. It has workbook pages for letter recognition, numbers 0-10, number words in English and Spanish, and letters in stroke groups. The book is divided into groups of lessons and there is review and evaluation at the end of each group. There are 94 horizontal pages, lessons are only one page each, and children begin writing words and phrases at the lesson 25 evaluation. Practice writing short sentences begins with lesson 46.
Level A begins with review of both lower and upper case letters, strokes, spacing, and smoothness. Lessons 15-19 review numbers, just the digits-not the words. Lesson 20 and forward are handwriting practice with letter formation, words, phrases, and sentences. There are 82 lessons (94 pages) at this level.
Cursive letters are introduced in lesson 37 of level B. Children begin by matching and comparing manuscript and cursive letters and words; cursive connector strokes in lessons 43-45; begin writing letters in cursive in lesson 48; cursive words in lesson 50; phrases begin with lesson 60; and complete sentences in lesson 74. There are 102 lessons in level B with additional practice pages at the back of the book.
The style chosen for this series is a continuous stroke method (modern style), so manuscript letters have curved strokes at the end of each letter. This is to make the transition to cursive smoothly. Levels A and B pages are horizontal orientation while levels C and D (94 pages each) are vertical. There are no available teacher editions to purchase, all instruction is included in the student edition.
ISBN: 9780547626727
