At our children's school, they're taught cursive writing instead of print. The teaching of cursive is going away in some educational settings, which some believe is a disservice to the children. For me, I'm glad our children are being taught cursive. I like cursive. Having to write in print is frustratingly slow.
That being said, I realized the other day that my cursive isn't correct cursive. (Nor is my typing for that matter as my fingers don't follow strict typing rules.) When I write, I do a combination of cursive and non-cursive. I thought however, I most likely could write in proper cursive if needed, which it turned out to be not true.
I was substituting at school last week. Knowing that cursive is taught there, I thought I would write two of the student's names on the drawing work they were doing. These were little toddlers, both just two, but they were interested in watching me write out their name. One was Jaxon and the other was Alex. I wrote Alex's name first and ran into a problem: how do you write a cursive x?
I figured it out on the second try, but it didn't come naturally. When I got to the fourth letter as I thought to myself, "how do I flow into an 'x'? Jason's name proved a second challenge, because I had to finish the 'x' and then move on to another letter. I decided I'd need to do more analysis of my poor cursive skills when I got home.
The next day I got out a notepad and just started writing random sentences in cursive. It didn't come naturally. It was hard. And I had bad habits. I pulled up a cursive alphabet on my phone to verify some letter connection issues I was having. I also had problems with some specific letters. It turns out I don't like waiting to cross the t's and dot the i's. I had mid-word, t-crossing strategies worked into my poor penmanship with decades of bad habit reinforcement.
I've always said I have poor penmanship. Maybe it's because I have technically poor penmanship. I'm going to have to go back to school and re-learn cursive. Perhaps as my children learn, they'll teach me too.
The Big Boy Update: Minecraft. Have you heard of the Minecraft craze? It was a few years back but it's still a big thing. Adults loved it and then children loved it. My husband made a Minecraft cake for one of our friends on the occasion of his sixth birthday. The other day during a "happy hour snow-in" impromptu party our neighbors had, a five-year-old introduced my son to Minecraft on his father's phone. My son loved it. I had been given it as a gift from Uncle Jonathan for Christmas a few years back so when we got home I downloaded it on the iPad and let my son have a go. He chopped down trees, dug holes, killed prey for food and set fire to a lot of things. He loved it—especially the setting fire to the forest part.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "Yay, I love X!" This is a common saying of late with my daughter. She loves lots of things. If you say, "we're having chicken for dinner," she'll exclaim that she loves chicken. If you say it's time for a bath she might tell you she loves baths. It's very charming. She's a very happy child.
Fitness Update: I ran eleven miles today. It was so easy. I haven't exercised in, what, two weeks now? We did the trial marathon run and then things happened, mostly weather things, and I haven't done more than a workout or two since. The first of our marathons is in two weeks. I suppose all that rest had my body ready to exercise. More runs are in plan, hopefully long runs.
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