Cursive Cards

For the past few weeks, Zach has shown a strong interest in sounds and letters.  He's constantly pointing out letters and asking what sound they make, and then thinking of words that start with that sound.  However, he's not keen on tracing the sandpaper letters.  I can't say I blame him; ours are pretty rough (because they're new) and his index and middle fingers are very sensitive because he sucks them!

It irritates me that he doesn't see cursive letters anywhere except in school (most signs that he sees are in upper-case print and books are in lower-case print), so I made some cards to spark a conversation on sounds and hopefully help him associate the cursive letter with the sound while his interest is strong.  I chose pictures of objects that he's interested in and found a great font that is almost exactly like the one used in the Montessori sandpaper letter and large moveable alphabet materials.  Please note that these are not an AMI-approved material, but simply an extension to support my son's burgeoning interest.

I'm sharing them with you but ask that you don't use them as flash cards to drill your child.  They're only intended to start a conversation that then leads to the child thinking of more words on his own, and that sparks interest in and awareness of cursive letters.  Also, please don't use them with young toddlers.  The images are not to scale, and it's important to provide accurate scale for children younger than 2 1/2.

To make them, simply print them out in color on white card stock, cut, and then laminate (or print on regular paper, mount on colored card stock, and laminate).

Have fun and let me know how they worked for you!

PS: the letter "x" doesn't have any images because its phonetic sound is not used at the beginning of any word.  But, this in itself is an interesting point to discuss with the child!

PPS: There are only four cards in each PDF because the alignment would get all funky if I tried to put more cards in the same document.

cursive-cards-a-d

cursive-cards-e-h

cursive-cards-i-l

cursive-cards-m-p

cursive-cards-q-t

cursive-cards-u-x

cursive-cards-y-z