Preschool Worksheets For Letters

Your preschooler's scribbling features recognizable objects.

You'll notice attempts to draw something specific like a person or a sun.

Your preschooler may also draw squiggly lines and show you this "writing" and ask you to read it.

This might indicate print awareness and an interest in learning how to write the alphabet letters.

Your preschooler has enough hand and arm strength to draw with a pencil.

A preference for markers over pencils may indicate that your preschooler needs more fine motor activities to build the hand and arm muscles needed for tracing letters with a pencil.

A pencil requires more strength to make a mark on paper compared with markers.

Although you'll see laminated letter tracing worksheets for use with dry erase markers, it's much better if you wait until your preschooler is developmentally ready for handwriting practice using a pencil and paper.

Your preschooler is developing the tripod grasp.

The way that your child holds a crayon, marker, pencil or chalk will go through stages that you can see.

First there's the palmar grasp, then the digital pronate grasp and finally the tripod grasp.

It takes time for the hand and arm muscles to get strong enough to hold a pencil using the thumb, index and middle fingers.

Otherwise, your preschooler will likely complain of a sore hand when working on letter tracing worksheets and the letters might not be legible.

Your preschooler understands that letters represent speech sounds.

Tracing letters a-z on a worksheet is basically copy work. Preschoolers may resist the task if it doesn't have any meaning to them.

Even if your 3 or 4 year old child can hold a pencil using the tripod grip, you'll have to decide if it makes sense to encourage letter tracing using worksheets if your child hasn't yet learned the alphabet letter sounds.

Once you've decided that your preschooler is ready for letter tracing worksheets, the next step is to find or make a set to print.

There are lots of preschool worksheets for letters that come up in an online search, but most of them are not worth printing!

Here are some tips to keep in mind during your search for letter tracing worksheets so that the task will be developmentally appropriate for your 3 to 4 year old child.

Alphabet activity mats often cover uppercase and lowercase letter recognition, letter formation and letter sound correspondence all on one laminated page.

That might appeal to parent who is following a letter of the week curriculum and doesn't yet know that it's an outdated approach to learning letters!

Alphabet activity mats that cover too many concepts at the same time will take away from the focus on learning how to write the alphabet letters.

Plus, you'll want your preschooler to practice handwriting using a pencil and paper, not a dry erase marker.

Although it's not terrible for a letter tracing worksheet to feature pictures that start with the target letter to reinforce phonics knowledge, the beginning sound when you say the word should be the same as the letter sound.

One alphabet activity mat for "Aa" featured an apple, alligator and airplane as examples of words that start with that letter. It is true for spelling these words, but not for letter sound correspondence!

When you say the word "airplane", you'll hear the long vowel sound which is spelled as "ai". It's a digraph, or two letters that represent one speech sound.

If you are going to choose a letter tracing worksheet with beginning sounds objects, avoid the ones that have the word labels too.

That way the focus will be on hearing the letter sound when you say the word.

Ideally, your preschooler will already know letter sounds before starting handwriting practice.

The beginning sound picture isn't necessary and might distract from the focus on letter formation.

Most preschoolers won’t have the fine motor skills to trace small letters like you’ll find on most worksheets that include the entire alphabet on one page.

Children learn through repetition. If your preschooler is just starting to practice writing alphabet letters, then you'll want a set of worksheets that focuses on one letter per page.

Doesn't it make more sense that your child will build muscle memory of the pathway if tracing one letter over and over again instead of tracing a-z on one sheet?

Alphabet tracing strips work well for 3-4 year old children because they isolate letter formation and they balance repetition of each letter with a typical preschooler's ability to concentrate for only so long.

Plus, you can be strategic about which alphabet tracing strips to use when your preschooler begins handwriting practice.

Unless your child is motivated to first learn how to write the letters in their name, it's a good idea to sort through the alphabet tracing strips and start with a few that have similar pathways.

If your child is learning lowercase cursive, your child could practice tracing letters e, l, b and h in a set because they all start with the same loop.

If your child is learning lowercase print, then your child could practice tracing letters l, i, j and t in a set because they all start with a vertical line.

You can also choose alphabet tracing strips with only lowercase letters.

Most words we write (and read) are lowercase letters.

So why not just start with teaching letter formation to your preschooler using lowercase letters?

Although uppercase letters might seem easier for your preschooler to write, you've got to think if easier is better than useful in the long run.

Eventually your child will use uppercase letters for only the start of sentences and proper nouns, and the rest of the letters will be lowercase.

If the alphabet tracing strip has a clear center line, then your child will learn the correct placement of each letter.

Some alphabet tracing strips feature arrows to show how to trace each letter using the correct pathway.

You'll need to decide if arrows will be helpful or distracting for your child.

Arrows are not needed if your child has already built some muscle memory of the pathways from finger tracing Montessori sandpaper letters while learning the letter sounds as in Step 2 of The Playful Path to Reading phonics program.

In the bonus module on teaching handwriting the Montessori way, you'll learn that writing letters on paper with a pencil comes after lots of fine motor activities to strengthen the muscles and build concentration, activities with Montessori sandpaper letters to learn letter sounds and build memory of each pathway, and letter formation practice using chalk on a chalkboard.

Only then do these children begin to write lowercase letters on wide lined paper using a pencil.

These children are typically around 4.5 to 5 years old when they begin to trace the alphabet in a way that's similar to the use of alphabet tracing strips for preschoolers.

That is why it's important to question whether preschool worksheets for letters are actually developmentally appropriate for your 3-4 year old child, or if you are wanting to use them because you feel pressured to get your preschooler ready for kindergarten.

Preschool worksheets for letters may not be developmentally appropriate for your 3-4 year old child.

Not all preschoolers will have the fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and concentration required to use letter tracing worksheets.

Ideally, preschoolers who are asked to trace the alphabet will already know letter sounds.

Tracing the alphabet will then be a meaningful task in terms of working towards the ability to write words to express ideas.

If your child is ready for letter tracing worksheets, the best printable will be a set of alphabet tracing strips.

It's a good idea to start with a few alphabet letters that have similar letter formations.

Alphabet tracing strips are better than a-z worksheets because they encourage repetition of each letter to build memory of the pathways.

You'll want to print multiple copies of each alphabet tracing strip and require the use of a pencil for tracing the letters.

The ability to trace alphabet letters only if a dry erase marker is used suggests that the child doesn't yet have the hand and arm strength for handwriting practice.

In that case, offer more fine motor activities.

You can also continue to work on pre-writing and pre-reading skills separate from handwriting as explained in The Playful Path to Reading phonics program.

Related Article: Preschool Pre-Writing Activities For 2 And 3 Year Olds