Handwriting App for Teaching Cursive
Do your kids know how to write in cursive? I am finding it astonishing how many do not. While I understand so many things are going digital these days, we are still using the hand written signature for identification purposes.
For this reason, and others that I talk about in 4 Reasons to Teach Cursive Handwriting in Your Homeschool, I highly recommend you include handwriting in cursive in your children’s educational plan. Whether that be as part of their homeschool curriculum, or a supplement to their public school education, as most public school no longer teach this important skill.
{Disclosure: I received access to the Getty-Dubay Cursive App for as well as compensation for my time to give an honest review of these products. All opinions expressed here are my own, and I was not required to post a positive review. Please see my full Disclosure Policy for more details.}
Getty-Dubay® Italic Handwriting with The Handwriting Success™ App
The Handwriting Success™ App contains the Getty-Dubay® ebooks that feature Getty-Dubay® Italic Handwriting. It is a complete handwriting curriculum for kids in grades K-6. There are 7 books in the series (all can be purchased as physical books or within the Handwriting App), which start with teaching basic Italic and move up to Cursive Italic. The Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting method has been a homeschool favorite for decades. Many homeschool parents who learned handwriting with Getty-Dubay are now using it with their children.
Besides the student books there is also an Instruction Manual for teachers and homeschool parents which provides additional guidance for all grades.
What’s Unique about Cursive Italic?
The transition from printing to cursive is straightforward and intuitive. Letter shapes remain the same from basic italic to cursive italic, eliminating the abrupt leap from “ball and stick” to looped cursive seen in other programs.
When you heard the word “italic” you probably think of it as a way to making writing slanted in a digital document, for emphasis or a quotation. But italic handwriting is a style of writing developed five centuries ago in the Italian Renaissance. Getty-Dubay Italic is closely based on this historical style.
Most handwriting styles have a print and a cursive form – so does italic. The difference is that other handwriting methods require you change letterforms between print and cursive (see the comparison image above). With the Getty-Dubay® The Handwriting Success™ App kids don’t have to relearn the alphabet to transition to cursive, they simply learn to link the print letters they have already learned, together.
Therefore:
- Italic print and cursive letterforms are identical — there is no need to learn new letterforms for cursive.
- Italic is cleaner — there are no loops or excessive serifs to mask the letter.
- Italic is more natural — the basic shapes are ovals and sloped lines, rather than circles and vertical lines that are more difficult to replicate.
What I Love About The App
- For starters, it’s an app! That means we can take it anywhere because it is always on my iPad!
- Also, because it’s an app (on my iPad that normally is only for me), my grandson thinks it’s super exciting to get to use it!
- You can use it with more than one child.
- Since you can erase within in the app, you can erase and use again and again. This gives endless opportunity to practice, without using any paper!
- The Getty-Dubay® Italic Handwriting is easy to teach. The series provides a simple and easy to understand approach with lots of chances to practice.
Useful Tip: We found it helpful to write in a color other than black. It helped the letters we were writing to stand out more on the page.
Purchasing The Handwriting Success™ App
Anyone with a tablet and compatible stylus can download it and try it for free on their iPad or Android tablet! You will find all the specs and requirements needed for the app to work properly over on their website – Handwriting Success.
