I'm reading a book by Samuel Blumenfeld called Homeschooling: A Parents' Guide to Teaching Children. In some ways it is a starter book, but I'm finding it interesting all the same because of Blumenfeld's strong advice in areas of his own interest. (I had his book How to Tutor on my shelves for a long time -- he advocates phonics, arithmetic drill and cursive first). The book is like your grandfather or great-uncle telling you how to homeschool. You don't run across that perspective every day -- I admire an older gentleman who still strongly recommends the teaching methods of his childhood days but at the same time will enthuasiastically advocate teaching children at home, and tell a homeschooling father that he should give his teenage son more academic freedom to pursue areas of interest.
But what I MEANT to say was that I was looking at this classical academy's curriculum -- I had come across it during the summer. They use the Core Knowledge sequence along with Latin, etc, which was why I was looking there again. Anyway, it links to Sam Blumenfeld's article on teaching cursive first. The online article is pretty much a reprint of the chapter on handwriting in the homeschooling book. If you haven't read Blumenfeld's writing before, this would give you an idea.
There is more on "Cursive First" at the Spell to Write and Read site.
Blumenfeld and Sanseri write that cursive was taught from primer-level, until the 1930's, when the "ball and stick" method was introduced. You can see that for yourself if you go to look at the 19th century primers like McGuffey's. You never see print handwriting taught at all.
There are some nice cursive pages at Donna Young's site, and Peterson Handwriting has a teaching tutorial/lesson plans for cursive readiness.