Handwriting Practice: First Sentences

For the child who knows the letters and is ready to put them in a row. Three warm-up pages - small letters, capitals and the little words that turn up everywhere - each row dashed to trace with an empty line underneath to write it again. A checklist page for the three things a first writer forgets: a capital at the start, a finger space between words, a full stop at the end. Then twenty sentences, two to a page: a picture to talk about, the sentence in dashed single-line letters, and two empty lines to copy it on. The cat can nap. I fly my kite. A whale is huge. Two pages at the end leave the lines empty for a sentence of their own. Then play Back writing: draw a letter on someone's back with a finger and let them guess. Draw a notebook and a crayon in four easy steps, join the dots to find a letter to post, finish the other half of a crayon, spot the difference, sort what flies from what does not and find the way through three mazes.