Review: Everyday Education, LLC - Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting (TOS Review) #hsreviews #copywork

For this review we used Perfect Reading & Beautiful Handwriting by Everyday Education, LLC.

This book teaches italicized writing, while also teaching reading.  I wish I could say we loved this program, I think it is a good program, it was just not a good match for my kids.  Writing is something they really struggle with (I have boys, not sure if it’s a universal boy thing, but my boys have always struggled with it).  My 7 year old also struggles a bit with reading, so I thought this would be a win/win.  However, it was not.  I also tried this with my almost 6 year old, and it didn’t work out well their either.   

With my 6 year old, I started with the ABC pages, and my 7 year old dove straight into the sentences (maybe that was part of the problem).  Their biggest struggle was the thin writing lines, which were also different from what they have been using.  They found it intimidating and frustrating, and it became a tear fest.  No fun!  I think if this had been their first introduction to writing, it might have gone over better, but the fact it was quite different from what they were use to, caused them stress over it.

I don’t want to discredit this program though, because I think it could be a really great program for someone else.  The italicized writing it uses, is very flowing.  I enjoyed doing some of the copy work myself, and this book could be a great tool for older students to focus on improving on their handwriting.  For my 7 year old, we just skipped the writing and used the reading aspect.

Here is the little bit of writing he did do (with my help).

You can see how the lines are different, he is use to writing on the line with the middle dotted line, but for this program you write in the space between those dotted lines.  Hard to get use to. Or goal was to do once sentence a day.

Here is a sample of my writing:

I skipped several chapters ahead, since I wasn’t learning to read with the program. 

I think the hardest part for my 6 year old, is that they space to write is quite small.  He just isn’t there yet in the fine motor department. So this was a hindrance.

I received the ebook version of this program, so I just printed the pages to use.

The book is recommended for kids as young as 4 or 5, to teach writing and reading, and while I am sure that some kids are ready for this at that age, my kids definitely are not.  Though I could see my daughter being ready in another year or 2 (she is 3).  It is definitely a case by case, every child is different thing to consider.

If your child is ready for the smaller space writing (had great fine motor skills and pencil control), this is definitely a great way to ‘kill two birds with one stone’ so to speak.  It incorporates a hands on aspect to learning to read, and teaches nice handwriting at the same time. 

It is available in a printed format, as an ebook (as mentioned) or you can purchase the printed and ebook format together.

The entire first chapter of the book is for the parent, teaching you how to use the book.  Chapter 2 is ABCs, and Chapter 3 dives right into reading sentences!  Before each page of sentence copywork is a word list.  Words are introduced in a teaching fashion, starting with short a words (as pictured above). 

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