Penmanship Practice Worksheets: Copy the Sentence

Penmanship practice worksheets: one handwriting habit a sheet inside real sentences, a model to copy, then three sheets written from memory. Free PDF.

24 sheets: one handwriting habit a sheet in real sentences, model then blank line, three from memory

These penmanship practice worksheets fix one habit a sheet, because telling a child to write neatly gives them nothing to do. Put a finger space after each word is something they can actually follow, and sheets 1 to 3 ask for nothing else. Everything on those pages is correct apart from the spacing, so the spacing is all there is to attend to.

Penmanship worksheet practising finger spaces between words — Sheet 1 – short sentences with a finger space after each word.

What is in the 25 pages

Sheets 1-3: finger spaces between words.
Sheets 4-5: tall letters that reach the top line.
Sheets 6-7: tails below the line, g, j, p, q and y.
Sheets 8-11: a capital to start and a mark to finish, including question and exclamation marks.
Sheets 12-14: capitals for names, days and places.
Sheet 15: every letter of the alphabet in one line.
Sheets 16-18: longer sentences and commas in a list.
Sheets 19-21: neat and even, then short lines of verse.
Sheets 22-24: remember it, then write it.

Every sheet gives a model sentence and then a blank line underneath to copy it on.

Heights are two habits, not one

Sheets 4 and 5 deal with tall letters and sheets 6 and 7 with the ones that drop below the line. Splitting them matters. A child whose b and h stop halfway has one problem. A child whose g and y sit on the line instead of through it has another, and correcting both at once usually fixes neither.

Handwriting worksheet for letters with tails below the line — Sheet 6 – g, j, p, q and y drop below the line.

Sheet 15 contains all 26 letters

A sentence using every letter is worth a page of its own, because it makes any letter the child avoids impossible to avoid. Children quietly drop the letters they find hard, and ordinary sentences let them. Keep a copy of this sheet from the start of the book and another from the end, and the difference is more honest than any of the sheets in between.

Writing it from memory, last

The final three sheets show the sentence, then ask for it with the model covered. Handwriting almost always gets worse here, and that is the point rather than a failure. Neatness that survives only while copying is not yet a habit, and this is the page that shows whether it has become one.

Handwriting practice sentences using every letter of the alphabet — Sheet 15 – all 26 letters in one line.

Class 1 to class 4

This works from about six, once letters are formed without being thought about. If they are not yet, the forming comes first in handwriting worksheets with directional arrows, and handwriting practice paper gives ruled sheets in four sizes for free writing afterwards.

Printing this one correctly

In your printer dialog set Scale to 100% or Actual size, not Fit to page. Fit to page shrinks the tracing letters and they stop matching the size a child's hand is learning.

Plain paper is fine for crayons and pencils. If your child uses felt pens, 100 gsm paper stops the ink bleeding to the next sheet.