How it works
- Pick your letters: the whole alphabet, the vowels, or just this week’s letter.
- Choose capitals, lowercase or both, and a handwriting style.
- Set the size and rows. The sheet on the right updates as you go.
- Download and print. All the letters you picked come out in one PDF.
What’s on each sheet
Every row starts with a model box: the letter in solid ink, a colour picture and its word, like an apple for A and a kite for K. (X shows a fox, as many phonics programmes do, because so few words start with x.) Beside it are three-line handwriting guides with the letter in grey, dotted or hollow outline to trace, and empty space at the end of the row to write it alone. With start dots switched on, the first letter to trace in each row shows a green dot where the pencil starts and a red arrow for the first move.
Teaching letter formation
Start at the top
Almost every print letter starts at the top line or the dashed midline and moves down. Children who learn this early write faster and more neatly later, and it stops habits like drawing an o clockwise from the bottom.
Group letters by how they start
Many teachers introduce letters in families rather than in A to Z order: the “magic c” letters (c, a, d, g, o, q) all start with the same curve, and the down-stroke letters (l, i, t) are the easiest of all. Pick a family with the letter tiles.
Say it while they write
Talk through the strokes out loud (“start at the top, pull down, lift, cross”) and have children say the letter’s sound and the example word.
CAPS links
- Grade RTraces simple patterns and the letters of their own name where the start point and direction arrows are shown.
- Grade 1Forms every capital and lower-case letter correctly by the end of the year, and copies short sentences from the board.
- Grades 2–3Keeps print script for most work in Grade 2; joined writing or cursive usually takes over in the first half of Grade 3.
CAPS sets aside about 15 minutes a day for handwriting in every Foundation Phase grade, and asks teachers to teach a letter’s sound and its shape together. So rather than working from A to Z, pick the letters from this week’s phonics lesson on the letter tiles.
Grade 1 children begin on blank paper with wax crayons before moving to ruled lines, so the large size and the hollow letters suit the first term best.
Summarised in our own words from the DBE’s CAPS for English Home Language, Foundation Phase Grades R–3 (2011).
