Tracing Worksheets for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Round Pictures

Three round things roll down this page like marbles on a run: a beach ball on the top ramp, a doughnut on the middle ramp and an apple on the bottom one. Each picture is big, and only its round outline is dashed. The stripes on the ball, the doughnut's hole and sprinkles and the apple's stalk and leaf are already drawn. On every outline a dot sits near the top right with a small arrow pointing up and to the left, showing the child where to start and which way to go round.

Going round anticlockwise from the top right is exactly how the letters o, c, a and d begin in every school script, so a child who traces these pictures is already practising the first movement of writing. The pictures are large because young children control big movements before small ones, and the dashes are thick and spaced for a chunky crayon. Encourage the child to start at the dot every time and to come all the way back to it, closing the circle. If a line wobbles, that is fine: the shape is the lesson, not the neatness.

This printable PDF suits three- and four-year-olds who have tried a first tracing page. After it, the curls and spirals page adds snails and lollipops that turn and turn again, and the straight-line page practices lines that go down, across and slanted. Picture tracing follows the outline of whole pictures; abstract line practice, step-by-step drawing and numbered dot-to-dot have their own pages.