News

The Instruction Manual gets a new look

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An old favorite gets a new look. Our Instruction Manual form the Getty-Dubay® Italic Handwriting Series has a new cover image, and a new lay-flat binding style. Teachers and parents will appreciate the new type of perfect binding that allows the book to remain open on a desk for easy reference.

The other Books A-G in the Series have cover images taken by photographer Tony Midson, highlighting scenes from nature in Oregon, the authors’ home state. The new Instruction Manual cover image continues this aesthetic, with a view from an old barn near Dufur, Oregon looking North across the Columbia river gorge to nearby Washington.

Although the Getty-Dubay® Italic Handwriting Series Books A-G are complete and ready to use in the classroom or homeschool, either as a set or individually, the Instruction Manual provides many additional resources.

In it you’ll find:

  • a background philosophy of italic handwriting
  • classroom management plans
  • detailed notes for teachers for each of the seven workbooks A – G
  • best practices for letter formation
  • assessment tools and forms
  • scope and sequence
  • tips on reading conventional looped cursive
  • additional student activities
  • and so much more!

Some parents wonder if they need to buy the Instruction Manual for their homeschool. No, it is not necessary have the Instruction Manual in addition to the workbooks in order to teach Getty-Dubay® Italic. But, if you do buy it, you’ll be happy you did!

The Instruction Manual is included in the complete series set that contains all the Getty-Dubay® Italic Handwriting Series books and two desk strips for $95.00.

Schooling at Home = Handwriting at Home

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Whether you have been recently thrust into the role of homeschool parent, or you have been homeschooling already, no doubt you are eager to find the best resources for educating your child.

Look no further! We’ll be exhibiting at the Great Homeschool Convention Online Convention where you’ll be able to take advantage of a special offer for Getty-Dubay Italic books, and you can find many other school-at-home resources, including featured speakers and presenters.

Here’s how to participate:

See your there!

Please note: Great Homeschool Conventions is a third-party presenter. Handwriting Success is one of many exhibitors, and otherwise is not affiliated with Great Homeschool Conventions.

Love your handwriting?

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Dear Handwriting,

I miss you and everything you do for me.
We used to plan our day together, go shopping together,
connect with people and share our deepest feelings.
But our magic has not disappeared — it is just waiting for the right spark.
I know that we can be legible, and even elegant together again.
Won’t you take my hand? 

Yours, XXX

Three ways to rekindle that spark:

#1. Write a note to someone special.

  • Brush up on your writing first, by using it more — for everyday lists, notes, etc.
  • Work up to that special letter by writing it out on regular paper first — like a rehearsal for a concert.
  • Use writing lines, or place a lined sheet underneath to make your writing more neat and legible.  
  • Choose a pen and paper that you really like the feel of.
  • Find a poem or quotation to write that inspires you.

#2. Use those three little words: Getty-Dubay Italic!

We have handwriting and calligraphy books for all ages.
#3. Share the love by visiting us on Kickstarter!

Getty-Dubay App launches on Kickstarter on National Handwriting Day

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How’s your handwriting?

The Getty-Dubay Handwriting Success App is a complete handwriting improvement program for adults using a tablet and stylus. We chose National Handwriting Day 2020 to take it to Kickstarter.

We’ve been getting requests to make this app for years. Now that Apple, Google, Wacom, Adonit and other manufacturers are ramping up their stylus competition, we think this is the right time to jump in.

With this app you’ll be able to use the WRITE NOW content over and over. Practice to your heart’s content, whenever and wherever you have your tablet and stylus.

With so many tablets on the market, this app needs to present the WRITE NOW content elegantly on many screen sizes, and with multiple stylus platforms. Our app developer is using cross-platform development technology to make sure that the user experience is easy and enjoyable on any suitable tablet. (Minimum tablet dimension will be 7.5 inches.) While this keeps cost down, there will be challenges with optimizing for the various native platforms.

We’re starting simple; no bells and whistles to distract you from your handwriting practice. With subsequent updates, we plan to have an in-app store for all of our handwriting books, and build in more self-assessment features that will complement the user experience.

Learn more…

Handwriting Day 2020

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We’re partnering with
Handwriting the Constitution
for National Handwriting Day,
January 23, 2020.

Every year, on John Hancock’s birthday, the United States celebrates the amazing cultural phenomenon of handwriting. Handwriting communicates — it expresses ideas, emotions, thoughts, instructions. Handwriting organizes — by making lists, plans, goals. Handwriting teaches — it helps us to learn and to think. And it connects us to thousands of years of cultural history.

There are many ways to celebrate Handwriting Day, and they all involve exercising that basic literary skill that you probably don’t remember learning for the first time. You can write a letter, postcard, or just a note to a friend or family member — a thank you, a get-well-soon, a love letter or a business letter. You can learn a new handwriting style, or brush up the one you use. You can write out your favorite poem, quotation, or a founding document.

At Handwriting Success, we are celebrating Handwriting Day 2020 by joining the ongoing events of Handwriting the Constitution. (Read the NYTimes.com story here.)Find out more about this non-profit organization created by Morgan O’Hara, and organize your own event www.hanwritingtheconstitution.org.

See below the events that are being sponsored by us at Handwriting Success in collaboration with Handwriting the Constitution. They are free and open to the public. Spend quality time getting to know this foundational document of self-governance by copying it out by hand, either on your own or in a group, in public or in private.

You can find out more about how to participate, or create your own local event at www.handwritingtheconstitution.org. If you organize an event for National Handwriting Day, please let us know at info@handwritingsuccess.com and we’ll post it below. (Be certain you provide all necessary information, including a contact e-mail address.)

Handwriting the Constitution for National Handwriting Day events:

OREGON

Monday, January 20, 2020, 7pm to 9pm. Rose City Book Pub, 1329 Northeast Fremont Street, Portland, Oregon 97212. Contact: info@handwritingsuccess.com. Download flyer.

Tuesday, January 21, 2pm to 4:30 pm. Multnomah County Library NW Branch, 2300 NW Thurman Street, Portland, Oregon 97210. Contact: info@handwritingsuccess.com. Download flyer.

Wednesday, January 22, 5:30pm to 7:30pm. Multnomah County Library Midland Branch, 805 SE 122nd Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97233. Contact: info@handwritingsuccess.com. Download flyer.

Friday, January 24, 3:30pm to 5:30pm. Multnomah County Library Capitol Branch, 10723 SW Capitol Highway, Portland, Oregon 97219. Contact: info@handwritingsuccess.com. Download flyer.

Saturday, January 25, 2:30 to 5:30pm. Multnomah County Library Central, 801 SW 10th Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97205. Contact: info@handwritingsuccess.com. Download flyer.

A PDF of the complete up-to-date text of the U. S. Constitution can be found here.

Getty-Dubay Italic Celebrates 40th Anniversary Year

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Getty-Dubay Italic began in 1979 as the collaboration between two like-minded educators. Both Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty are artists, calligraphers and educators. They recognized the need for an alternative to the then-traditional system for learning handwriting. Getty and Dubay set about creating instruction books for children — all handwritten — that were soon widely adopted by schools. A handwriting book for adults came in 1991, as well as two instruction books on calligraphy. Today, Getty-Dubay Italic is in use in business and education throughout the United States and internationally.

Getty and Dubay have offered 170 Rx for Handwriting Success seminars for medical professionals across the United States, and also have presented at the World Health Organization in Copenhagen, Denmark and the International Patient Safety Conference in Florence, Italy. Each, as an artist in her own right, has taught handwriting and calligraphy as faculty in schools and colleges in the Pacific Northwest.

Getty-Dubay Italic has been featured in more than 75 journals and on television & radio including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and NBC’s “Good Morning America”.

Getty and Dubay have written eleven books to bring beauty and ease to the everyday act of writing. They began their mission in 1979 to provide a new, viable handwriting system for children with the seven developmentally appropriate workbooks that make up the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series.  These books and accompanying Instruction Manual are now in use in many schools and thousands of homes in America and abroad. From their decades of experience helping adults change or improve their handwriting, they created the self-guided instruction book, Write Now: the Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success.

The legacy of their mentors in calligraphy, including that of Lloyd J. Reynolds, is in evidence in all their books, especially in their calligraphy instruction book for adults, Italic Letters. Dubay has also authored a calligraphy book for students, Getty-Dubay Italic Calligraphy for School & Home as a companion to the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series. Italic Calligraphy is the product of an unique program by Reed College to bring calligraphy into elementary school classrooms. 

Celebration of the 40th anniversary will include a vendor exhibit at the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development 2019 Conference in Chicago, Illinois, and many more events to come!