Vehicles to Trace and Color

13 printable pages. One vehicle a page in thick outlines to color, with its name on four-line handwriting rules underneath.

A coloring page and a handwriting page are usually two separate sheets, and the second one is the one children put down. This book puts them on the same page on purpose: color the truck first, then write the word Truck while the truck is still in front of you.

Car coloring and word tracing worksheet with a thick-outline car and the word Car on handwriting rules — Page 2 – the car, with the word on four-line rules underneath.

What is on each page

One vehicle, drawn large in thick outlines. Thick enough that a crayon held in a fist does not cross them, and simple enough that a three-year-old can see what it is without being told.
The name on four-line handwriting rules – solid baseline, dashed midline, faint ascender and descender lines – with a grey copy to read and dotted copies to trace.
An empty ruled row underneath, where the word gets written with nothing to trace over.

The twelve vehicles

Car, Bus, Truck, Train, Boat, Plane, Bicycle, Tractor, Helicopter, Digger, Fire Engine, Scooter. They are ordered easiest word first: Car and Bus are three letters and can be finished in one sitting, while Helicopter at the far end is ten and is a genuine piece of work for a five-year-old.

Why the words are short before they are long

A child who has just written Car successfully will attempt Truck. A child whose first page was Helicopter will not attempt anything. The order matters more than the subject does, which is why the pages are not alphabetical.

Train worksheet with an engine and carriage to color and the word Train to trace — Page 5 – the train.

Using it with a group

The pages work as a set of twelve or as twelve separate sheets – nothing on one page refers to another. In a classroom, printing one vehicle per child and letting them trade is usually faster than printing the whole book thirty times, and it gets the words read aloud rather than only written.

What it does not have

No branded or licensed vehicles. Every picture here is a generic shape drawn for this book, so it can be printed, copied and handed out without anyone’s permission.

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.