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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
There’s so many components to handwriting in the kindergarten classroom, but it’s always important to remember that your students are only a year or so further on from initial mark making. Handwriting is such an essential skill for all students to master as it’s the main way that they’ll communicate their thoughts throughout their school lives and beyond. It’s essential, therefore, that they have mastery over this skill so that their ideas can always be read and understood. These handwriting practice worksheets provide the perfect opportunity for letter formation practice at any time of year, and your students can build up a bank of letters as you progress through the year.
Teaching Letter Formation Practice
With no official guidance about attending pre-school, there will be a massive range of abilities in literacy among your students. For some, they’ll come into your room with a high level of letter recognition, and may even be able to write a few of them (particularly the letters in their own name). For others, your classroom will be their first introduction to formal schooling, so you’ll be working on their letter formations from scratch. These handwriting practice worksheets are a great tool to use for an independent writing center and give your students the opportunity to demonstrate with a pencil or marker the skills they’ve been practicing with playdough or tracing in shaving cream. The key to success here is repetition and feedback, and these printable writing worksheets give you the scope for both.
Preparing These Handwriting Practice Worksheets
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Moving Beyond Handwriting Practice Worksheets
These black and white free handwriting sheets are simple to print and use. Students just need a suitable writing tool and a copy of whatever letter you want them to work on. They work their way down the page, from tracing over complete letters to creating their own letters from the tracing template. You can give them extra letter formation practice with some of these activities:
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Free writing practice – the overall goal of these handwriting practice worksheets is to help your students master the uppercase version of each letter by themselves. After they’ve completed the letter formation practice by tracing and copying, have them attempt to write the letter on a different sheet of paper.
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Explain to a partner – repetitive work is always more fun with a partner, and you can help your students build positive social skills along the way with this fun game. Have one student pick a letter page from the pile of handwriting practice worksheets and describe how to draw it to a partner (without saying the name of the letter). The partner listens, draws and says which letter they think was being described.
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Make a book – part of the challenge of kindergarten literacy is to help students translate the sounds they hear in words around them to the letters on the page. You can use these printable writing worksheets as an introduction to beginning sounds work. Once students have successfully copied, traced and written each letter, challenge them to come up with a picture of an object that starts with that letter.
For more pre-k and kindergarten alphabet centers, check out my Alphabet Mega Bundle for letter recognition, letter formation and letter sounds!
This is a huge bundle of alphabet activities from worksheets to clip cards and everything in between! You students will love the variety of letter games included and you’ll never have to worry again about not having enough fun literacy centers 🙂
Here are some examples of the activities included:
1) Alphabet Draw The Scene
2) Letter Detective
3) Cut, Sort and Stick
4) Alphabet Puzzle Fun Sheets
5) Alphabet Beginning Sounds Coloring Pages
6) Dot The Letter
7) Q Tip Letters
8) Alphabet Handwriting
9) Letter Mazes
10) Alphabet Playdough Mats
11) Alphabet Punch Cards
12) Alphabet Beginning Sound Clip Cards
13) Alphabet Flip Books and many more!
Add These Alphabet Books To Your Library:
Other Printables That Work On Learning Letters:
1) Lowercase Alphabet Tracing Cards – Grab these free lowercase alphabet tracing cards for a quick literacy center that you can use any time of the year! These back to school handwriting practice cards are easy to use; just download and print off copies of the letters you’re studying that week. It’s a great idea to laminate them so you can use them for trace and erase or playdough activities.
2) Flower Alphabet Sound Mats– These cute flower alphabet sound mats will fit beautifully with your outdoor theme and give your students plenty of practice when they’re learning the alphabet. These free alphabet printables show a wide range of common objects and is sure to be your new favorite hands-on preschool letter activity.
3) Space Alphabet Sequence Cards – At a foundational level, you can adapt any of your alphabet order activities to have a space theme, and these cute alphabet sequence clip cards will keep your students engaged with their fun pictures and challenges. They are a great way to have your students work on learning the alphabet independently.
4) Unicorn Alphabet BINGO – This unicorn theme alphabet bingo pack is a fun and engaging way to help preschool students master their letters before starting kindergarten. By having your students play letter recognition games like ABC bingo, you give them opportunities to learn important social interactions like turn taking while also reinforcing the shapes and sounds of each letter.
5) Farm Alphabet Find and Cover – Work on letter recognition with your preschool students using this printable farm literacy center. You can use this fun farm alphabet game any time of the year in small groups or individually.
6) Dinosaur Lunch Alphabet Munch – This dino alphabet match game helps students in identifying lowercase letters and identifying capital letters. In this free alphabet printable for preschool, your student will pick a card and find the matching letter on the recording sheet. So simple! Print your dinosaur worksheet for preschool now!
7) Alphabet Word Search Worksheets – These cute alphabet wordsearch worksheets combine alphabet pictures with hunting for words in a grid and wrap up with traceable letters. The best thing about these alphabet tracing worksheets is that they’re ready to use in a matter of minutes but you’ll have a literacy center you can use all year long for plenty of lowercase alphabet tracing practice!
8) Alphabet Tracing Pages – The traceable letters and pictures in these fun trace and erase kinder alphabet worksheets give multiple opportunities for letter shape practice as well as spelling of some longer words. Download this alphabet tracing worksheets pdf and help your students gain mastery over their lowercase alphabet tracing.
Educational Tools For Your Classroom:
Browse My Most Popular Literacy Activites:
1) Valentines Alphabet Clip Strips – Kids will choose among 5 different letters on the strip to identify the matching ones.
2) Alphabet Beginning Sound Coloring Pages – Watch your child become more familiar with each letter of the alphabet as they practice coloring in the objects with that beginning sound.
3) Tommy Turkey’s Alphabet Pie – This turkey-themed letter recognition activity is so simple to prep and makes a great file folder game!
4) Pirate Alphabet Playdough Mats – Just print out the playing mats and ask your child to form the letters out using the playdough provided.
5) Farm Alphabet Find and Cover Letters – Work on letter recognition any time of the year!
6) Werewolf Spin and Cover – Kids will race to find all the letters on their mat this Halloween.
7) Bunny Burrows Game – Fun game for small groups or circle time where students will catch a bunny and say out the sound.
8) Letter-saurus Fossil Digging – Dinosaur lovers will enjoy being a pretend paleontologist and finding all the letters.
9) Alphabet Handwriting Worksheets – Practice lowercase and capital letters with these print-and-go pages.
10) Rainy Day Alphabet – 1 printable, many ways to use.
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Fun Alphabet Pages: Traceable Letters and Pictures
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Community Helpers and Their Tools 3-Piece Puzzles
Firefighter Beginning Sounds
I am a teacher of three year old preschoolers. they are all excited to begin to write and read books. I would love to use some or all of your free printables with my students. They would love to see their work they do with dry erase markers come to life with their work to take home. Thank you, jhsmythers@yahoo.com; Jennifer
Thank you for your comment 🙂 Hope you find plenty of useful activities for them! — Denise