Welcome to Marie’s Penmanship Books
These books are a series that teach a student to master the art of handwriting in manuscript, cursive, calligraphy, and other penmanship skills.
- Penmanship Beginning Handwriting Strategies
Handwriting in manuscript printing and in cursive are both great skills which will benefit a student’s going forward. In today’s world there are applications where both abilities are needed over and above typing skills.
A young child begins the adventure of writing the alphabet and the numbers somewhere between three to five years old. Their parent or guardian should pay close attention that they begin holding the pencil or marker in the best way. The pencil should be held by the pointer finger and the thumb while resting on the side of the tall middle finger near the first knuckle. The ring finger and the baby finger should be tucked under the palm of the hand. This manner of holding the pencil will provide the most versatility for movement and pressure changes which will be needed in future handwriting work.
Because their fingers are quite small they often start with multiple fingers on the pencil. Perhaps getting a 3- sided pencil or marker pen will help get the ideal hand-hold. Another aid is to have them tuck a button or a small piece of chalk between their baby finger and palm of the hand. This will keep the little fingers out of the way for the thumb, index finger and middle finger to hold the pencil. If for some reason this ideal hand hold is too awkward after a few days of trying, leave it off for a week and try again. Eventually muscles adjust. Experience has shown that often the way they start holding the pencil is how it continues for life.
However, not to worry, legibility of content is the key quality to desire in this business of handwriting. A little reward for compliance is appreciated by the child or even an incentive for effort. It may be some years before the child expresses gratitude for your efforts to encourage good handwriting.
Practice times should not be longer than 10 to 15 minutes per lesson mainly because we want to develop the handwriting habit without losing enthusiasm for so valuable a skill. Schedule the practice at a similar time each day or every other day. Leave at least about 30 minutes away from screen time so that they can focus normally. After some vigorous play the child may sit more quietly with good focus. A little prayer to God to write well before the lesson is efficacious. The child’s success is the success of the parent, teacher or guardian as well.
FEATURED BOOK
Book 1 Introducing Printing and Handwriting
To be more explicit this title could be expanded to “Introducing Manuscript Printing and Cursive Handwriting”, but it is what it is to keep it simple. A five-to-six-year old can do these lessons and still progress from week to week quite well. Printed letters are introduced in pairs of similar letters and in order of difficulty. This process is covered in about 3 months while amazing growth is going on in focus, muscle control, and formation of consistent letters. Then printing is paused and cursive is introduced to get the child to be familiar with cursive letters. It is easier than it looks because the student keeps the tip on the paper most of the time. A big advantage to introducing cursive early is that the child begins to recognize letters in both manuscript and cursive as two forms of the same letter. Border decoration is encouraged toward the end of their handwriting period. Borders strengthen the muscles for writing skills while doing something fun. The child can find some pattern which he would like to try at the front of the book. Borders usually delight the student because of the artistic effect.
- May 2025 Penmanship Writing Can Help
May 2025
Handwriting is still a valuable skill to learn while young when learning to read and spell at the same time. This is the ideal. The one subject supports the other two and all three develop at the same time. This plan is much better than leaving one to be caught up later because the one needing practice is often left lagging behind.
Printing is similar to the letters in reading and so, naturally it is easier to print first because of familiarity of form, but certainly cursive handwriting should still be taught early so that the student is familiar with the form and can identify the cursive words as well. Cursive is beneficial for ease and speed and very beneficial in many applications, such as letters, notes, drafts, summaries, cards, signatures, etc.
Printing neatly must be emphasized because it will be used in cases where accuracy of letters is very important such as labels, maps, recipes, applications, directions, addresses, etc. Printing practice should be done on a monthly basis to review tidy printing with accuracy.
Handwriting of both printing and cursive needs to follow a well-known model to be legible for others like parents, teachers, and society. In Canada the various printing fonts available in media are quite varied. The child will do best to learn printing similar to this page’s font, simple and straight up. Cursive handwriting has quite a history but the most common one has been named the Zaner-Bloser style which is the one presented on our penmanship site. Practicing a little cursive every day makes it a painless addition to printing.
Handwriting is a sort of mechanical action of recording what one is reading or spelling or thinking about. To make the mechanical action more pleasant it might be delightful to put on soft classical music for background music. Spelling dictation is a good variation on voice. Also, rhyming lines and rhyming words are fun to write. Making borders is another strategy for practicing uniformity of slant and form.
When one is older, eventually, one summarizes what is being said and writes that down as notes. The most excellent benefit of cursive handwriting is to augment memory skills. The student can then later read back the notes which are able to jog the memory for many more details of a topic that took place at a meeting or a lecture.
Elementary school students would do well to spend time practicing printing and doing cursive and using them in day-to-day subjects before going on to high school and university. Printing and Cursive Books can be found at our website www.penmanship.ca
This Month we will review our new booklet
To Sing a Canticle
It is short course in learning to sing on key using warm-ups and simple songs. The lessons begin by singing tones as warm-ups in the C Major scale with the Do Ra Me Solfege. This word Solfege is the name given to the Do Ra Me Fa So La Ti Do. The Do Ra Me can be sung in any key and always follows the same tonal shifts in the same order. Memorizing the tonal values of the solfege is encouraged as the groundwork for understanding how songs can have different keys yet sing the same solfege.
The C Major scale contains tones in the range of students 7 to 9 years old. On the piano that would be C4 to C5. Younger children, 3-6 years range is inside the C Scale from about E4, F4, G4, A4. Older children can sing lower than C4 and higher than C5 some notes. Do not ask children to sing outside their range as the voice box is growing and developing at its own pace. Keep singing as a pleasant light activity. The voice box is a muscle and needs to be trained but singing is tied to our emotions. Consequently, various aspects need to be respected to produce beautiful singing.
To Sing a Canticle has been assembled to address a short supply in home school materials that have to do with singing instruction.
This EBook has a plan to bring some structure to a short singing course for elementary school age children, both at home and at school. It presupposes that there is a piano or a keyboard available for the instructor to use for practicing voice matching the tones. We hope to help develop the confidence that a child needs to sing on key after covering the course or a least knows what singing on key means. Some beginning music theory is presented to explain signs and symbols which appear on sheet music. A booklet to practice theory will be forthcoming going forward. Further singing and music information can be researched as well as with qualified music teachers.
Contents:
- Cursive Handwriting Penmanship (Books 1-3, 5-8) uses letters, words, and Bible verse selections for practice. Each book encourages making artistic borders around one’s work to develop writing motor skills. Test sentence to see improvement at the end of each book. View the samples.
- Manuscript Printing for beginners (Books A,B,1) in Roman Style, View the samples.
- Step by Step Calligraphy in Italic, Gothic, and Uncial style. (Book 4) A flat nib pen is recommended for it.
- How to do the letters of the Versal Alphabet to begin Cursive verses as in antique holy cards. (Book 5B)
- Handwriting with Proverbs (Book 5PR) The cursive formation of the alphabet is introduced with the International Radio Alphabet. Guess the correct word to complete the Proverb practice. Answer key.
- Book 5MP Manuscript Printing. (New in 2022) Scripture verses are used for practice. Review printing.
- Book 9 is meant to sharpen legibility of manuscript block letters, upper and lower case printing.
- Two European Handwriting Styles-Simple and Traditional using Bible verse and greetings in Latin, English, French, and Spanish (Book 10). A fine or medium tipped ballpoint pen is recommended.
- Bible DVD’s, the Holy Rosary DVD, and a Way of the Cross DVD, hard copy and pdf format. CD’s too.
- Little Bird birthday calendar available in hard copy and in pdf format. Handwrite or print in the names.
- Altar Servers Study Guide for Holy Mass
- Learn to Sew booklet
Ebooks are Available! Each penmanship book is now also available as an Ebook in PDF format. Shipping Ebooks is FREE. You can get your Ebook in a matter of minutes by downloading after your purchase. Selected hard copies are available on the menu bar in SHOP – penmanship books. Ebooks are available in SHOP -Ebooks. Both can be found in “View all Products” below.
Handwriting is a talent that one can always learn and practice anytime, even as an adult. We can improve the appearance of our handwriting with diligent practice and still retain a personal style. The results of our handwriting are always a telling detail of our personality. It often happens that we need to sign a legal document or sign an application form. It is then advisable to have developed a unique signature to fit the space and only you can reproduce it and others will recognize it as your signature. It’s the exception to legible handwriting!! On this site you may view information about each book as well as download a few sample pages from each one. These books are available by secure online purchasing through paypal.com or Stripe. We encourage you to browse anytime. Purchasing can be done Monday thru Saturday. Please avoid Sunday purchasing to keep Sundays holy on the Lord’s Day. If you are a Canadian customer living in Canada and you have questions concerning shipping please call or email us. As of January 2025, shipping hardcopy has more than doubled previous rates. We will be keeping the hard copy option available for those who would like to order that way. Ebooks remain free shipping. We hope you have a good experience in attaining good legible handwriting when using our materials.
Email: ppicard@usa.net, or phone (226 678 7305) – Marie Picard