Customer Reviews

A Reason For Handwriting, Kindergarten: Kindergarten Student Workbook

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am using A Reason for Handwriting K with my 4 year old daughter. It is working pretty well for us. It is a traditional, "ball and stick" type of handwriting program.

The workbook starts off with a short introduction to basic pencil strokes - circles, diagonal lines, etc. It then introduces the beginning writer to proper way to write the different letters of the alphabet, both upper and lower-case. It uses the concept of a treehouse to teach children how big or little to make the letter (ie. a capital "D" touches the roof of the treehouse, while a lower-case "a" does not).

Unlike the other workbooks in this series, this one does not have the children copying scriptures. Instruction is limited to writing the letters. One of the best features of this workbook are the coloring pages. As each letter is introduced, there is a corresponding picture of an animal or object that begins with that letter of the alphabet. My daughter enjoys coloring the pictures, and it is good motivation for her to try her best.

I do recommend this book. We have found it pretty easy to use, although probably helps that my daughter has about a year of previous handwriting practice. If your child gets easily frustrated, you might want to look into the Handwriting Without Tears series instead. This one is working for us and I like the emphasis on scripture that is found in the more advanced workbooks.

I bought the "K" or Kindergarten version of A Reason for Handwriting "Featuring Scripture Verses and Outreach", because I had hoped the lessons would be based on "scripture verses and outreach" as it says on the cover -- something like Worktext "A" is, but for younger kids.
It looks like a fine workbook, with great illustrations, but I am disappointed that the "K" version of the book doesn't have the content it says it has. I can get similar content for free on the internet.

My wife says that this is a good book, but it is "a little slow", as in it has pre-school material in it.

I chose A Reason for Handwriting because I liked the idea of building up to copying a memory verse each week. It sounded like a good way to incorporate some memory work into our homeschooling week. Well, I guess I should've realized that this starts in the Level A book, not K. The Kindergarten work text is only letter practice, with some whole word practice (animal names) near the end of the book. No verse copying or pretty border pages at all.

This is a little confusing since, if you go to ARFH's website, they show samples from each work text and the K sample shows a border page (which led me to assume there'd be a verse to copy on some days). There are no border pages in this book, at all.

That said, the quality of this book is very nice, kid-friendly pictures and plenty of letter practice room. It's just not what I thought it'd be...and for the price, (since I didn't get the whole program, just the workbook) I could've just bought regular handwriting paper or a cheap-o book from a big box store for 1/3 of the price.

This handwriting book was fun for my daughter. There is plenty of room for practice and a picture to go along with each letter being learned. Not only did she learn how to write her letters correctly we also learned a little about each animal that was pictured.

My son, Noah and I are doing homeschooling, kindergarten this year. Beginning this school year, Noah only knew how to write his name. He hated his book, and handwriting. Holding the pencil correctly was hard, and pressing down was hard, and controlling it....HARD!! Oh he hated it. But now, after only 4-5 weeks of this program (we use one page per day......) he is writing like a champ!! He loves handwriting and asks to do handwriting FIRST now!!! He is writing simple 3 letter words already and loves practicing on the chalkboard and white board AFTER using doing them on paper first.

This product is wonderful, and I would suggest it to anyone who needed a good, simple curriculum or even just practice sheets for public schooled kids for letters. The program describes how a letter is placed in the "tree house". Some letters start in the attic, or the meeting room, and some letters have tails that go down the tree house ladder to the ground. This has helped Noah in doing his letters, know where to start the letters and it makes it fun and puts an image in his head to work off of.

This is the second time I've used this book to teach handwritting. I recommend it often to others. It is simple, straight-forward and just the right amount of writting for a kindergardener. I've tried teaching handwriting out of the many discount store books, but I've gone back everytime to this series. It provides clear directions and has a thorough progression to writting the letters without being boring. I also own the teachers manual with this series. I especially liked to use the teachers manual with the K level because it tells something about the animals the student has one his page for the day. Great series!

My kids love this book, my 5 year old is looking forward to doing it a second time. It is perfect for pre-K and Kindergarten. Not too much for one sitting, and a coloring page on the back. We use this as our special coloring page to try our hardest to stay in the lines and be as neat as possible, which is really the whole idea of handwriting as well.

I bought this workbork thinking there would be actual scripture to practice (there is not in this book), and words. Unfortunately, it's mostly letter practice, and no 'special sheets' at the end of the week to write what they've learned to give away.

I think this is more at the preschool level, than the Kindergarten level, and I don't think they've described the content accurately.

That said, for a PRESCHOOLER, this is a great workbook!

Let me start by saying that I've heard a lot of great things about this company & that I am sure that some of their other material is fantastic.

When I purchased this workbook it was based on the assumption that it is based on scripture, which is how they market it. In fact on the top right hand corner of my version it says: Featuring Scripture Verses & Outreach.
Imagine my frustration when I looked through the workbook and could not find a single verse in it. In fact, besides the front cover showing child-like angels and a brief statement in the introduction about God's world, there is nothing scripture related or even religious in nature about the workbook.

There are three phases in this book:
1) Basic lines & circles
2) Tracing each letter of the alphabet
3) Tracing the word 'Horse' to correspond with the letter 'H'. Each letter is represented by an animal or an item in nature (such as a leaf).

The other reason I am rating this so low is because this is not Kindergarten work, this is for preschoolers learning to write. In Kindergarten they are expected to make & write short sentences (and eventually whole paragraphs!). It is because there is so much writing in Kindergarten that I sought some extra help for my son. I hoped that he would be writing short paraphrased scripture verses that we could memorize together - after all, this is a Reason for Handwriting, right?