Many kindergartners have a hard time knowing where to put their pencil when tracing letters or numbers. It’s hard for them to remember the stroke order of each one and often they make up their own stroke order. Then they practice the stroke order wrong over and over before a teacher catches it and can reteach it. I’ve found a little trick that seems to help!

I take a highlighter or colored marker and put a dot where they should start their pencil.

I’ve also put it in the spot they should put their pencil when they’re supposed to write their own letter (not tracing).

What other tricks have you learned that help your students when they’re first learning to write letters?
There’s nothing like killing 2 birds with one stone! I feel like this printable does that, so I’m pretty jazzed. First, kids read the sight words (clearly a win!), then they use the quantity of each word to make a simple graph (win-win!). Might be a good whole class activity or a page to send home and do as a “parent-student” practice. It’s very similar to the page I made for St. Patrick’s Day! Enjoy!
Click here to download the full-size PDF:
Colors. I love them! Yup, I love them.

Still working on matching numerals with word form numbers? Check out this simple page for kindergarten or first grade. Students write the numerals in the pie with the matching word form number. Enjoy!
One important thing kids need to learn in kindergarten is their own personal information (name, phone number, address and birthday). Here’s a pretest you can give your kindergartners at the beginning of school to see what personal information they know about themselves.