Kids Need Cursive Writing for Strong, Powerful Brains
Kids need cursive writing for strong, powerful brains.
Why would the ‘experts’ suggest that cursive writing in school is unnecessary?
There’s such strong evidence that the connection between the stimulation of your fingertips and the pathways to your brain is so important. I will tell you compelling reasons why I believe cursive writing is imperative for children in school.
As a homeschool mom, I have slipped up in placing a strong emphasis on cursive writing. In school, my girlfriends liked to write their letters beautifully. And most of the boys were happy with scribbling their letters, just to get the job done.
Since I have six boys and three girls, I didn’t push cursive writing skills. The funny thing is that my dad, a teacher all of his life, had beautiful handwriting and he put great importance on writing with excellence.
Brain issues, Alzheimer’s, and Dementia are in the news every day. Experts say that we have a chance to beat brain degeneration, or at least slow the process if we start early. Certainly, we must make a conscious effort to eat better, exercise, and have a deep faith early in life to stay healthy and strong and ward off these horrid diseases.
Scientists say that there’s a massive connection between your fingertips and your brain.
If you play the piano, or knit, or do any frequent activity involving your fingertips, the benefit to your brain is significant. I’m winning there because I play the piano and I knit. My fingertips are busy!
Even though we’ve made these discoveries about the connection between the brain and the fingertips, what is our school system teaching our children? Are they leading the way to better brain health? No!!
They have stopped teaching children cursive handwriting in most schools. “We don’t need to bother,” they say. “We’ll soon be just voice texting anyways.”
Handwriting -think Calligraphy- is Art!
Of all the skills you can master, the easiest and most consistent activity you can do is handwriting. It’s a skill and it’s beautiful.
Wait, you say! We don’t need to take the time to learn that stuff. Why don’t we Just just copy and paste?
We have not left the ‘real’ world yet, people.
Cursive writing is an art and a way to express yourself with design as well as the actual text.
According to Professor Virginia Berninger, University of Washington, hands have a unique relationship with the brain when it comes to composing thoughts and ideas. She has studied children in grades two, four, and six.
Her study revealed that the children wrote more words, wrote them faster, and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand versus with a keyboard.
There is a whole field of research known as “Haptics.”
The study includes the interactions of touch, hand movements, and brain function. Cursive writing helps train the brain to integrate visual and tactile information and fine motor dexterity. Cursive writing trains the brain to have so much more than communicating strictly with words on a page.
A lot is going on in that process, and the practice is keeping our brains strong, including the interactions of touch, hand movements, and visualization.
School systems are driven by ill-informed ideologies, by no longer requiring students to learn cursive writing. They dismiss it as an ‘ancient skill’. They seem obsessed with only testing knowledge putting value on test results rather than training kids to develop a better capacity for acquiring the knowledge.
I talk a lot about the value of reading. Reading and writing develop the capacity, not memorization and copy/paste!
Here’s a great option that you can use at home for your little ones. Take matters into your own hands:
– Grab a copy of Cursive Handwriting for Kids, and help your little one’s brain to be strong.
– Help them learn to play a musical instrument has massive benefits to our brains.
– Find an area of art they might enjoy (woodworking, crafting, sewing, etc)
Everybody has paper and pencils. Not everybody can afford a computer for their kids—but maybe such kids are not as deprived as we would think.
I created 5 of the cutest little series of books for very young children.
Each book is dedicated to a simple activity:
1. ABC’s
2. Beat the Mazes
3. Word search, writing words, tracing
4. Dot to Dot
5. Coloring very cute little animals
Finally, please tell me what you think.
I believe that it is my responsibility to educate my children. It is up to me and not the teachers to ensure that their education is complete. I have had my kids in school and I have homeschooled, and I know that the buck stops here…at my doorstep. I must be in charge of making sure they learn everything that I feel they need to learn and not depend completely on their teachers.
Brain imaging studies reveal that multiple areas of the brain become co-activated during the learning of cursive writing.
Here are 7 compelling reasons:
Consider the value of implementing cursive writing into your children’s education:
- It has a calming effect.
- It coordinates the left brain and right brain.
- It boosts cognitive skills.
- It inspires creativity.
- It sharpens aging minds.
- It improves memory.
- It uses more of your brain.
This is not a rant. It is a reminder to myself to do my best for my kiddos, even if I fail because my heart is drawn to them.