Letter Tracing Worksheets from A to Z

An alphabet worksheet usually asks a child to copy the same letter across a ruled line twelve times. That is handwriting practice, and it is fine, but it is not how a child first learns which letter is which. Recognition comes from tying the shape to something the child can already name out loud.

So each of these 27 pages does one letter and one picture. The capital is hollow and takes up half the paper, with dashed guides inside its body running the way the pencil actually travels. The other half carries a single drawing, and the drawing's name starts with the letter being traced: an airplane beside the A, a koala beside the K.

The only words on the paper are the small grey caption along the bottom edge, and it is there for the adult who is filing the page, not for the child. No instruction line, no name box, nothing to read before the pencil starts. That leaves a child who is not reading yet free to work alone, and it leaves the adult free to name the picture in whichever language is being spoken at the table.

What order should the letters be taught in?

Not alphabetical, usually. Most phonics programmes start with the letters that build the most words soonest, commonly s, a, t, p, i and n, and leave q, x and z until much later. These pages are numbered A to Z for easy finding, but nothing stops you printing them in whatever order the child's class is working through.