Dotted Picture Tracing for 1st Grade: A Morning in Town

Morning has come to a little town street. A building with columns and a tall building with many windows stand on the pavement, a signpost points two ways, a dog sits by the kerb, and on the road below a bus and a car drive by. The morning sun and a small cloud sit in the sky. The whole picture is drawn in small round dots, evenly spaced across the entire page, from the windows of the tall building to the wheels of the bus. There are no dashes here: every line to trace is a row of dots.

Dots ask for more precision than dashes. The child has to keep the pencil exactly on a narrow path of small points and follow it into the details: the columns of the first building, the windows of the tall building, the arms of the signpost and the dog's ears. This is the most detailed page in the set, made for first graders whose pencil grip is now steady. Because the dots have one spacing across the whole page, the child can settle into a rhythm. Encourage slow, careful tracing and short breaks; finishing the whole street is a real achievement.

This printable PDF suits first grade and children who have already traced the kindergarten pages with ease. Afterwards the finished street is a wonderful picture to color. For the same precision with a challenge of looking, try the forest page with five hidden animals. Picture tracing follows the outline of whole pictures; abstract line practice, step-by-step drawing and numbered dot-to-dot have their own pages.