Memoria Press: New American Cursive: Penmanship Program Workbook 1

As part of our homeschool plan, it's always been in my mind that Boo Bear would learn to write cursive. It's sad to me that schools have taken it out of their curriculum and that so many children aren't able to read it or write it. I was super excited to get the opportunity to review Memoria Press classical curriculum, the Penmanship Program Workbook 1. 
Memoria Press offers a variety of classical education curriculum options. You can find everything from core curriculum to options for just one or two subjects. It all depends on what you're looking for. 
We received the physical book copy of the Penmanship Program Workbook 1. 
From the moment the book arrived we loved it. Mr. Meerkat is so cute and he's your tour guide to this program. We choose the Workbook 1 for our selection because I felt that's where we needed to start. We've dabbled in cursive before but it's time to really start getting into it. So this review came at the best time!
The book starts off with a teacher's guide to help you understand how the book works. The topics it covers to begin with include:

• Posture of your child while writing
• Pencil grip 
• Position of Paper
• Multi-sensory learning
• The three S's of cursive

By going through the teachers guide you learn that lessons typically take around 15-20 minutes. They are simple lessons and Mr. Meerkat goes with you throughout the book. 

Whenever you start a new letter your child will take three steps. They will say the letter, feel the letter and write the letter. On each letter your child will start by tracing it with their fingers. The letter has specific arrows teaching the direction of how the letter should be written. 

Then your child will work on the letters both in lowercase and uppercase. Once they have worked on the letter some they can do a fun exercise and draw some artwork. This is their freespace and this can make the lesson longer than 15 minutes as you give them time to let their artistic side come out.
How did we use this? We added this to our Grammar block of time each day. Most times we did this four or five times a week. I would ask him to do a few pages at a time or as many as he liked. He would work on a letter or two a week depending on how fast he went through. 

What we thought... I really loved Mr. Meerkat to be honest. He's a cute helper and on each page you end with a smile. Since Boo Bear loves animals Mr. Meerkat was a great addition. We went through several letters and he really enjoys this. 
While it is designed to be for the 1st grader, Boo Bear enjoys it and loves to do his cursive practice daily. I can see us moving on in this program to help him solidify a good cursive penmanship knowledge in the future. 
You can click the banner below to read more of the products reviewed by the Review Crew. You can also check out Memoria Press's Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram , Pinterest and Google + accounts to see how you can put this to use in your home.