The ABC Writing Lesson is your child's first step to handwriting. By now, your child can hold a pencil and draw short straight lines, triangles, squares, and circles. Great! It's time to learn letters. After writing letters becomes automatic, your child will combine them effortlessly into words. Next, she will write words as they pop into her mind, not thinking about the individual letters. She will focus on the content and not on the hand movement. Handwriting and reading go together. Developing handwriting skills will speed up learning to read.

The ABC Writing Lesson follows the alphabet and provides practice pages for lower and uppercase letters, and numbers. Have your child use a soft lead pencil, perhaps with a pencil grip. Remind her not to hold the pencil too tightly and not to press it too hard on the page. For younger children with less developed fine motor control, consider a crayon; using a regular pencil or pen might be too difficult. You will find the upper and lowercase letters are similar in size. At this point only the shape is important; understanding of scale comes later. Ask your child to trace the letters and copy them in the blank areas with lines. Encourage your child to stay within the lines when tracing letters but not be too strict about how she forms them.

Only practice and repetition matter at this point. Every child has a unique writing style and follows their own path of motor development. Be patient, and practice will work its magic. There is a dotted line around the main picture; have your child trace it. The dotted pictures are also for the child to trace and color for better fine motor control. If you need additional practice pages, go to the expanded version of this book in printable PDF format on our website, www.readinglesson.com.

When ready, move on to the Teach Me Handwriting book in this series. Happy writing from the Giggle Bunny and the Reading Lesson team.