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.