Pre-writing strokes worksheets

The order is the order children can manage them. Most can copy a straight line down at about two, a circle at about three, and a line at a slant only after four — so the sheet starts with straight lines, puts slants second, and the row of slants is the one most likely to come out crooked. Zigzags, waves, humps and cups follow, because each of those is two of the earlier strokes joined without the pencil coming off the paper.

The paper is ¾ inch with a solid midline rather than a dashed one, because a child this age is aiming at a line rather than reading a hint, and every stroke is drawn where the letter it belongs to will go: a straight line from the top line to the baseline, a circle between the midline and the baseline. The two loops are left off on purpose — they are the strokes only a joined hand needs. Fourteen rows at this size is two pages, and the sheet is two pages rather than a smaller ruling.

The rules are drawn as real strokes at real sizes, and what goes on them is set to the ruling: a letter stands on the baseline and reaches the top line, and a stroke pattern is drawn between the same lines the letter it belongs to would be. The type size is worked out from the ruling and from the font’s own measured proportions rather than picked to look about right. Put a ruler on it. The ruling is the size it says it is.

Practice only improves writing when the child judges it. A row of the same letter written ten times is ten letters; a row written five times and then looked at, with the best one circled, is a decision about what a good letter is — and the decision is what carries to the next page, not the repetitions. Copying is the weakest way to learn a letter, writing it from memory after looking at a model is stronger, and judging your own against the model is the step that makes the practice count.

So use any sheet on this shelf the same way, whether or not it says so. Look at the model together and say what makes it right — where it starts, where it stops, how tall it stands. Write, without tracing where there is nothing to trace. Then choose: which one is closest, and why. The circle-your-best sheet makes that the whole exercise; on the others it is the last minute, and the minute that matters.

This sheet is set for US Letter — 8.5 × 11 inches. Paper size is not a preference on a ruled sheet: sent to a printer loaded with something else, the browser shrinks the page to fit, and a ruling that has been shrunk is no longer the size it was chosen for. So there is a second copy of this sheet, ruled identically and measured for A4.