It's like the alphabet, but fancy

Abby breezed through her first grade spelling book already, so now there's a gap in our day that spelling and phonics used to fill. I'm fine with having one fewer thing on my lesson plans, and explained to her that now we would have more time for other stuff.

This information did not go over well with my little scholar.

She insisted she needed to learn cursive now.

I insisted I wasn't going to teach her cursive until third grade, because that's when kids are supposed to learn cursive. (I could be wrong. Do kids even learn cursive in school anymore? Either way, I see no point in teaching it to a six year old.) And I told her I did not care how "fancy" it was. Fancy aside, it simply wasn't necessary.

This information also did not go over well with my little scholar.

"Just write it down for me and I'll teach it myself," she huffed, frustrated with my lack of enthusiasm for adding one more piece of curriculum to her schedule.

Fine. I was tired of hearing about it, so I wrote out the cursive alphabet (with the help of her dad, because I drew a blank on a number of those seldom-used letters) and handed it to her. I added her name to the top of the page, so she could see how the letters are supposed to connect to one another.

And then, she did what Abby does. She studied the page I'd given her, then set to work transcribing it in her own script. Then, using the key she'd made, she worked out how to write a few simple words, and eventually, her first sentence: "let me go."

How fitting.

I'm pretty sure she's going to put me out of a job soon.