My four year old daughter has been interested in "pretend writing" (scribbles) for awhile, now, but has recently begun to be interested in making "real" letters. Most people start teaching their children "print" (ball and stick) letters at this point, but some Montessori schools (and maybe Waldorf?) start the kids with cursive letters right away (usually Danerian as far as I can tell). I'm hoping to get her into a local Montessori school (K-8) but if I don't, public school will almost assuredly teach her print. And maybe not cursive at all. So, I am inclined to start her with cursive, particular since her pretend writing is all cursive-like, in that it's sort of like long, connected zig-zags all across the page. The question is, which type of cursive do I start her on? I can do cursive Italic and there's a whole program for children put together by Getty Dubay. But American cursive is closer to what she would learn in school if the school does teach cursive. For that, I would look at Michael Sull's work which is for older kids, we could go slow. Spencerian would really be business hand and it is really popular in the homeschooling community (as is cursive Italic).
So, if you were to teach a small child some form of cursive writing, which would you choose? I'm leaning toward teaching cursive Italic, since I am familiar with it or both of us learning Spencerian/business writing together which might be fun (or not!).