Classical Conversations ~ PreScripts Cursive Letters and Coloring Review

We are preparing to end our very first year of home school and I am very pleased with the progress that we have made. Hannah has proved to be a good student who is smart and loves to keep her brain engaged. She is the type of child that needs something to do all day long or she will get into trouble. Do you know any children like that? Well, because of her need for extra work we have really enjoyed working with this next company and I wanted to take a moment to share it with you!

Classical Conversations is a company that makes three different curriculum programs that are designed to give homeschooling parents effective and helpful teaching tools. Sometimes, it is easy to feel inadequate when it comes to teaching our children but companies like this one can help to reinforce and build confidence. Here is a bit more about this company and it's founder, Leigh Bortins...

Leigh Bortins is the founder of Classical Conversations Inc. and the mother of four homeschooled sons. In addition to teaching study skills for 20 years to children and adults, she has written several books, including Echo in Celebration: A Call to Home-Centered Education and The Core. 

Our purpose is to lead the home-centered education movement by equipping parents and students with the classical tools of learning needed to discover the order and beauty of God’s creation and to inspire others to do the same. 

We believe parents are their children’s primary teachers not because parents know everything but because each child is uniquely (and wonderfully!) made and because the people who know and love a child best are the ones most motivated to help that child succeed. 

For the purpose of this review, I was sent the PreScripts Cursive Letters and Coloring, which retails for $11.99. My main reason for choosing this out of the other books that they offer is because it focuses on cursive handwriting, coordination for tracing lines and coloring activities...which are all perfect activities for my 4 1/2 year old! Sometimes, it can help take the boredom out of a hum-drum school day with something different and that is exactly what this book has done for us!

At first, I was not sure if this would be good for us because we are learning manuscript writing as opposed to  cursive so I didn't know if it would confuse Hannah at all. All my worrying aside, we dove right into the book and Hannah set her mind to work!

The way this book is set up is there are first exercises that work with your child's coordination and ability to carefully trace. Above, you can see an entire page of circles that vary in size and shape. Hannah has difficulty tracing and staying on lines so this was nice to have. Other pages have different types of lines both straight and wavy so your child can practice the skill of writing on non-straight lines as well, which is also nice.

Other pages have detailed pictures for your child to color. Each picture consists of an image from medieval and modern world history. Now, I will say here that these are very detailed pictures and are difficult for a small child to color neatly. My four year old simply colored the entire picture one color. :)

Another feature of this book is that it contains cursive writing practice pages of the entire alphabet. This involves some finger tracing to get the child familiar with the direction and strokes that the particular letter requires and then they can practice writing the actual letter. If you look at the picture above, you can see a large, bold "F" at the top of the page. This is what the child would finger trace. This is actually something that we have done in our daily schooling with learning how to write manuscript letters and it works wonderfully! Finger tracing is good writing practice.

The one thing I didn't like is when the child is writing the letters, they don't go all the way to the top of the line...which to me, doesn't make much sense. It seems like a sloppy way to learn how to properly write letters. In her writing courses that she is taking now, neatness and going all the way to the top line is very important and in this book, that is not stressed nor do the letters themselves touch the top line so that can be confusing for Hannah at times.

So, how did we do with this book? Well, I would have to say that Hannah did quite well. She loves to pick up the book when I am not looking and work on it by herself. Her cursive handwriting skills are very rough because this is the first time she has ever tried to write cursive but all in all, this has been a great book for her to use. I am also loving all the coloring pages as they allow her to try and stay in the lines and become a neater artist. :)

I would definitely recommend that you check out this company...even if you don't home school, this is a great resource for extra curricular work for your child especially if they are struggling with a particular subject in school.

If you would like to read more reviews on this and other Classical Conversations work books, be sure to check out the other Crew Reviews by clicking on the button below.