Tracing Worksheets for Preschool: My First Big Whale

A first tracing page should give a small hand one big, friendly job, and that is all this page does. A whale almost as wide as the page swims across the inside of a ship's round porthole. Its outline is drawn in thick, well-spaced dashes, and a solid dot with a small arrow on its back shows where to begin and which way to go. The waves at the bottom, the bubbles and the rim of the porthole are already drawn in solid black, so the only dashed line on the page is the whale itself.

Three- and four-year-olds are still learning to hold a crayon and to keep it moving along a line. Long, gently curving strokes are the easiest place to practice that, much easier than small corners or tiny details. The whale's eye, mouth and belly stripes are printed solid so the child is never asked to trace a line too short or too close to the next one. Let the child run a finger along the whale first, then trace slowly with a thick crayon, and praise a line that keeps going rather than a line that is perfect.

This printable PDF is meant for preschool and for any child who is just beginning to trace. It pairs well with the look-then-trace page, where a penguin and a kangaroo are traced next to a solid model, and with the round-and-round page of big circles. After that the kindergarten pages add more pictures and thinner lines. Picture tracing follows the outline of whole pictures; abstract line practice, step-by-step drawing and numbered dot-to-dot have their own pages.