The strokes inside every letter
Every printed letter is made of a few strokes: a line down, a line across, a slant, a curve. Children who can draw those strokes smoothly find letters much easier to learn. Tracing lines lets them practise the strokes on their own, before letters ask them to remember shapes as well.
A good order
- Straight lines, across and then up and down.
- Slanted lines and zigzags, for letters like v, w and z.
- Waves and bumps, the curves in letters like n, m and s.
- Loops, a first taste of joined handwriting.
- Shapes, closing a line back where it started.
Next steps
When lines feel easy, move on to alphabet tracing with start dots and stroke arrows, and toname tracing for each child’s own name. Easy mazes practise the same pencil control.
NCF and NCERT links
- Age 3–4The NCF-FS fine-motor competency (C-3.3) starts with scribbling, tearing paper, free colouring and clay work.
- LKGChildren colour with crayons, cut big shapes and thread big beads.
- UKGChildren draw with a pencil, cut along straight and curved lines and colour inside a shape.
The NCF-FS builds hand control through play and materials first: clay, beads, sand and paper tearing. Tracing sheets work best alongside these, not instead of them. For Balvatika, CBSE points schools to NCERT’s Jadui Pitara play-based materials.
Let children trace each line in the air and with a finger before using a crayon. Short sessions of five to ten minutes suit LKG better than a full page at once.
Summarised in our own words from the National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage (NCERT, 2022) and CBSE Circular Acad-30/2025 on language instruction under NCF-SE 2023.
