Handwriting: Workbooks & Practice Sheets ~ Crazy JC Girl

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The OT Toolbox has a wonderful article on Pre-Writing. Scroll half-way down the page and you will see listed the natural order of how toddlers & preschoolers write lines (vertical, horizontal, Xs, etc.). This activity uses a dry erase board with markers, which is exactly what we did as well. We also used Crayola’s Wonder Markers & their special paper as well.

We absolutely loved the BIG Workbooks. Yes, some of them have duplicate pages, but Crazy JC Girl didn’t mind. This book has pre-writing activities (like mazes) included. When the children are younger, I would recommend tearing out the pages to work on a flat surface.

We also started using the “A Reason for Handwriting“ series. Along with a variety of worksheets from the OT. This particular book, Level K/Kindergarten, does not contain Bible verses like in the older level books. This one focuses on tracing lines, pencil control, and starting with the alphabet – both upper and lower case. You do not need to wait for your child to reach Kindergarten age to use this book. You can most certainly start this book when they are preschoolers and ready to control their pencil.

Pencil Control / Tracing worksheets are a wonderful tool during this stage of writing. Here are a variety of worksheets available from the internet:

TLS Books has several preschool worksheets available to download. These are samples from their books. I recommend their books as well. The pictured worksheet can be found here.

Brainy Maze has a few FREE warm-up work sheets available. They also have a bundle that you can purchase.

Worksheet Fun has several preschool writing worksheets available for FREE.

A Blog from the Pond has a cute FREE Robot Worksheet. She also has several wonderful bundles available to purchase from her store. A plethora of Excellent Resources.

I would make a lot of Crazy JC Girl’s “worksheets.” I would hand-write her assignment & then she would follow my instructions. Well, here is another one of those DUH Moments. Powerful Mothering has an article about how she teaches her children pencil control. She also has a lot of printables available.

Creekside Learning has a wonderful post with a mix of ideas for children who hate workbooks & worksheets. Some of these ideas are geared towards older children, some can be used with younger kiddos.

Crazy JC Girl loved mazes growing up….still does. Here is a nice addition that uses 1-2-3s & A-B-Cs for dot-to-dots. Another excellent pencil control tool.

We also moved on to the next levels in the “A Reason for Handwriting” series. The next in the series would be Level A (Grade 1) Manuscript. It uses Bible verses from Proverbs and Psalms for weekly assignments. Each week you have 4 days of handwriting assignments – a few words from the verse you are memorizing. On the 5th day, you can pick a pretty paper from the back of the book and copy your verse out. Then you can color the page and have a wonderful piece of art for your walls, or a gift to a grandparents, etc. We actually tore out each weekly assignment page so Crazy JC Girl could write on a flat surface. She then filed it away in her “finished work” folder so samples could be used in her yearly portfolio.

The series continues with the following options:

Crazy JC Girl did not continue with the entire series. I believe her last book was Level D. In fact, we broke away from the books periodically since she needed more practice on Manuscript before moving to Cursive. She practiced handwriting throughout the summers and used different worksheets. The grade-levels listed above are just suggestions in order to complete the series by middle school.

Shown below are pictures of my homemade worksheets for 2nd Grade. You can easily see Crazy JC Girl wasn’t ready to move on to cursive. Notice she wasn’t tracing letters, but was free-writing below the verse I had written out for her to learn. These are weekly assignments. She would write a few words or lines each day while trying to memorize the verse for the week.

This is a great way to utilize Awana &/or Sunday School Bible verse memorization into your homeschool language arts. Don’t forget – this is also a great way to learn speeches from Abraham Lincoln or Patrick Henry. A few lines every week and you’ll have those lines memorized in no time flat.

Since I believe that everyone should learn their Bible, I’m going to post my Free Monthly Handwriting Pages with Bible verses for you to use with your children.

This post may contain affiliate links. You can read my full affiliate disclosure here.