Copy the Word: No Dashed Letters, Two Lines to Fill

There is nothing to trace on this Kindergarten word tracing page. Four animals sit in cream cards down the left, a raccoon, a dolphin, a seagull and a horse, and each word is printed in solid teal underneath its own picture, on the card rather than on the writing lines. To the right of every card stand two empty handwriting rules, top line, dashed midline, baseline, and both are for the child to fill. The model never sits directly above the writing, so the word has to be carried across the page by eye and held there while it is written out.

Copying from a nearby model is a real step up from tracing, and it is the step that shows whether a word has been learned or only followed. The child must look, hold the letters in mind, and put them down in order with no dashed shape underneath to correct the hand. Doing it twice is what makes the page useful: the first attempt is usually a letter-by-letter journey back and forth to the card, and the second is where a child either writes the word in one movement or discovers they cannot yet. That difference between the two lines is the most informative thing here, and it reads at a glance across four rows.

Print the PDF free and let one row be finished completely before the next begins, so the memory of the word is still fresh at the second write. Cover the card with a finger for that second attempt if a child is ready to try from memory. Trace once, write it twice keeps a dashed lane in place if the leap is too big today, and write the word on plain lines is where the model disappears altogether and the spelling has to come from the sounds.