How it works
- Add names. Type one name, or paste your class list with one name per line.
- Choose the handwriting your school teaches: print or Irish cursive.
- Pick a size and rows. The sheet on the right updates as you go.
- Download and print. Every name is its own page in one A4 PDF.
Print or cursive?
Many Irish primary schools teach cursive from the infant classes, while others start with print and join later. The cursive here is modelled on Irish school handwriting. Choose the style your school uses so the sheet looks like the letters on your classroom wall.
Teaching a child to write their name
Capital first, then lower case
Children see their name with a capital letter and lower-case letters on their bag hook and their books. Type the name exactly as you want it practised, or set Capital letters to “Capital first”.
Little and often
A few rows a day works better than a whole page at once. Slip the sheet into a plastic sleeve and use a whiteboard marker to practise again.
Irish curriculum links
- Stage 1A name is often the first meaningful writing in Junior Infants. The handwriting outcome moves from mark-making to forming capital and lower-case letters.
- ReadingEarly word recognition: a child’s own name is usually the first word they read on sight.
- TransitionsAistear (2024) and the Primary Curriculum Framework (2023) are aligned to support the move from preschool to school.
Irish names give tracing sheets extra work: fadas, as in Seán, Róisín and Siobhán, and letter groups like the “aoi” in Aoife that don’t sound the way English spelling would suggest. Type each name exactly as the family writes it, fada included.
A child who used a name card in preschool may already know some letters of their name. Start from those and build up the rest, a few rows a day.
Summarised in our own words from the Primary Language Curriculum (2019), the Primary Curriculum Framework (2023) and Aistear (2024).
