I don’t think John has ever practiced cursive writing.

Oh dear God, we struggle enough with printing.

Until one day, John just decided to try this (instead of printing), with no prompting by Mom.

He said, “It says John’s List”.

Oh, you should have seen his face!

Surely many days of (monotonous) practice are ahead of us.

But for today, John has chosen to try cursive, heading up his loved/hated “list” we make daily.

Also (second photo), it doesn’t look like much, but here is something John lost

(by making poor choices in school and at piano lessons).

By the time he got to “DropBox”, he smiled a huge one and said, “Box is in cursive”.

Because he wanted to.

What do our kids all want to do?

I suggest we use that desire shamelessly!

We may start out with extrinsic motivation.

(Extrinsic = coming from someone else.  Intrinsic = coming from inside the child.)

Whatever you do with your child, let them take the lead.

And always look for the ways to make it their idea.

Before you know it, you both could  be up to your neck in intrinsic motivation and self-directed learning.

Peace be with us,

Gayle