Kindergarten Handwriting Worksheets
Ages 5 to 6 · letter body 9.53mm · pitch 28.59mm
This is the year letter formation is worth teaching deliberately, because habits formed now are the ones that stick. Teaching by letter family rather than alphabetically is the single change that saves the most time.
What most children can do at this stage
- Copy a cross, a square and often a triangle, which is the readiness signal for letters
- Form most capitals, which are easier because they are all straight lines, simple curves and full height
- Write their own name, usually in capitals first, which is a normal stage
- Sustain about ten minutes of writing before fatigue shows in the letterforms
What usually goes wrong
- Letters built in the wrong order. A child who draws a circle then adds a stick beside it has to guess which side the stick goes on, and that guess is what later becomes b and d confusion.
- Reversals, which are entirely typical at this age and not a cause for concern on their own.
- Starting letters at the bottom. Almost every letter starts at the top, and a bottom start is the habit that most slows writing down later.
How much practice
Ten to fifteen minutes a day is plenty. Watch while they write rather than correcting the finished sheet, because the error is in the movement and the finished letter often hides it.
Why the size matters
The sheets below use a letter body of 9.53mm. Every preset on this site follows the rule that published handwriting paper uses: the space above the midline, the letter body, and the space below the baseline are equal, so the line pitch is exactly three times the letter body. That is why the guides line up with the letters at any size.
Skip-a-line spacing is conventional at this level.
Read next
Sheets for this stage
Print these as they are, or open any of them in the generator to change the text, the ruling or the size.