Hi, Niki,
Yes, the lads are learning "cursive italic," rather than regular old cursive. They like how it looks, and that it is relatively easier than "loopy" cursive; all of the cursive italic letters are formed in the same way as the "basic" italic (i.e. the printing), so they don't have to start all over again when they get to cursive. It's a clear and attractive hand, and one that will do us just fine, I think.
I had a couple of other math ideas for you: Don Cohen (the mathman:
http://www.mathman.biz/ ) has some neat materials that my oldest has loved. They're very open-ended problems (which has been helpful in the perfectionism department), and I love that they are things that he has revisited several times, with a new take on the problems on each revisit. Highly recommended!
Edward Burger and Michael Starbird (of Teaching Company fame) have a neat book (The Heart of Mathematics: An invitation to effective thinking) that my oldest (he's just turned 9) likes a lot: it's a college textbook for non-math/non-science majors, and has a lot of the "fun stuff" (cryptology, topology, Fibonacci numbers, fractals, tesselations, etc.). It's really pretty accessible to kids, and engagingly written, lots of colour pictures, etc. It's ridiculously expensive new (at least in Canada), but I found a very gently used copy on abebooks for practically nothing.
I did do the Island level of MCT with Harpo when he was 6, and it worked really well. Just as a heads-up, though, there was a fairly significant jump in difficulty level between Island and Town (especially the vocabulary book); it was still fine, but it took us a good bit longer to do the second series.
Do let us know if you have any more questions; there are lots of homeschoolers on this board, and we'd love to help!
peace
minnie
