Homeschool Curriculum Review: My Printing Book Grade 1

Notice: This is an honest review.  I have not been paid to write this, and I have not received a free copy of the curriculum in exchange for a review.

I want to tell you how pleased we are with My Printing Book Grade 1 by Handwriting Without Tears.  My daughter knew how to write some of her letters but not all of them and going into first grade I wanted her to have a lot of practice.  If you want to see the 2nd grade Handwriting Without Tears review click here.

Three Things I love about this curriculum:

1) It shows kids how to write each letter and number in a fun way and then has them practice it.  It even describes how to hold a pencil.  The student workbook is self explanatory for parents and students and we did not need to buy the teacher's edition.  In fact I think the teacher's edition would be a waste of money.

2) My 6 year old loves this work book.  I realize that not all children love the same things, but she loves working in this workbook.  After the first few days of me reading the instructions to her, she figured out what she was supposed to do.  There were a lot of mornings when I would come out of the bedroom to find her at her desk doing this workbook before we were even ready to start school.  She doesn't like writing because she's not used to it, and she thinks writing takes a long time.  Yet somehow she likes this workbook and doesn't groan or complain when I ask her to get it out.

3) It takes hardly any time at all to get through this work book.  You could do one open page a day (2 pages), or you could do several lessons in a day.  My daughter is currently very slow at handwriting, but it only takes her about 5 minutes to do the 2 pages in a lesson.  Because she really liked this book and wanted to do multiple pages per day, I decided not to stress too much about speeding through this curriculum.  Initially I really wanted her to work through it slowly so she could do some each day all year long, but when we were done with a lesson she'd ask me to do more and I decided to let her go through it at her own pace.

Things I don't like about this curriculum:

There are none currently.  There are 2 other levels above this curriculum (another printing book and then a cursive book) and I'm not sure I'll get the second grade printing book because by then she'll know how to write all of her letters just fine.  I will be getting the cursive book for her when it's time to learn cursive though.

I randomly selected 3 lessons to show you below.  You can click on pictures to make them bigger and get a better look.

Have you used this curriculum before?  Did you love it?  Hate it?  Let us know in a comment below.