How it works
- Pick your letters: the whole alphabet, the vowels, or just this week’s letter.
- Choose capitals, lowercase or both, and a handwriting style.
- Set the size and rows. The sheet on the right updates as you go.
- Download and print. All the letters you picked come out in one PDF.
What’s on each sheet
Every row starts with a model box: the letter in solid ink, a colour picture and its word, like an apple for A and a kite for K. (X shows a fox, as many phonics programmes do, because so few words start with x.) Beside it are three-line handwriting guides with the letter in grey, dotted or hollow outline to trace, and empty space at the end of the row to write it alone. With start dots switched on, the first letter to trace in each row shows a green dot where the pencil starts and a red arrow for the first move.
Teaching letter formation
Start at the top
Almost every print letter starts at the top line or the dashed midline and moves down. Children who learn this early write faster and more neatly later, and it stops habits like drawing an o clockwise from the bottom.
Group letters by how they start
Many teachers introduce letters in families rather than in A to Z order: the “magic c” letters (c, a, d, g, o, q) all start with the same curve, and the down-stroke letters (l, i, t) are the easiest of all. Pick a family with the letter tiles.
Say it while they write
Talk through the strokes out loud (“start at the top, pull down, lift, cross”) and have children say the letter’s sound and the example word.
In the Australian Curriculum
- Before schoolIn the Early Years Learning Framework, playing with letters and marks is part of Outcome 5: children are effective communicators.
- FoundationForming most lower-case and upper-case letters using learnt formations (AC9EFLY08), and naming the letters of the alphabet.
- Year 1Writing words with unjoined upper-case and lower-case letters.
In Foundation, letter formation is taught alongside letter sounds, so the letter of the week usually brings its sound, its shape and a picture word together. Children who say the sound while they trace link the two from the start.
There is no single national handwriting style. The state options here follow the models on classroom charts: NSW Foundation Style, Victorian Modern Cursive, the Queensland Beginners Alphabet and South Australia’s pre-cursive. All of them start with unjoined letters, which matches the Year 1 expectation of unjoined writing.
Summarised in our own words from the Australian Curriculum: English, Version 9.0 (ACARA) and the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia, V2.0.
