How it works
- Add names. Type one name, or paste your class list with one name per line.
- Choose the handwriting your school teaches: print, pre-cursive or joined.
- Pick a size and rows. The sheet on the right updates as you go.
- Download and print. Every name is its own page in one A4 PDF.
Pre-cursive or joined?
Many schools in the UK teach pre-cursive letters from Reception: each letter has a lead-out flick so that joining later feels natural. Others start with print and introduce joins in Year 1 or Year 2, when the national curriculum expects children to begin using the strokes that join letters. Choose the style that matches your school’s handwriting policy, so the sheet looks like the letters on your classroom wall.
Teaching a child to write their name
Capital first, then lower case
Children see their name with a capital letter and lower-case letters on their peg and their book. Type the name exactly as you want it practised, or set Capital letters to “Capital first”.
Little and often
A few rows a day works better than a whole page at once. Slip the sheet into a plastic wallet and use a whiteboard pen to practise again.
Curriculum links in England
- ReceptionThe Writing goal asks for recognisable letters, most formed correctly, and the Fine Motor goal for a tripod grip in almost all cases.
- Writing guideThe DfE writing framework asks for explicit handwriting teaching early in Reception, with regular practice that many schools make daily.
- Year 1Pupils form lower-case letters in the correct direction, starting and finishing in the right place, and form capital letters.
The writing framework suggests that early handwriting lessons start with the movements of each letter, made big in the air or with a finger, before pencil and paper. A name is a good first word because children see it every day on their peg and tray.
Watch the grip as well as the letters. The fine motor goal names the tripod grip, and the framework quotes Ofsted’s finding that weak letter formation and pen grip make joining much harder later on.
Summarised in our own words from the EYFS statutory framework, the National Curriculum in England: English programmes of study and the DfE writing framework.
