Back to School Line Tracing for Preschoolers
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These FREE Back to School Line Tracing activities will help your kiddos start working on the development of the small muscles of their hands, fingers, and thumbs, to be able to do other activities such as painting, doing puzzles, and playing with playdough, which will prepare them to start writing on their own later on.
The pack includes fifteen different full-page tracing activities. You can find it at the end of this post.
Importance of Tracing Activities
Tracing activities bring many benefits to preschoolers because they help children develop essential skills, which in turn allow them to perform important tasks such as grasping, buttoning, and feeding themselves, among others.
Some of the most important benefits are:
- Pre-writing Skills Development: Tracing introduces children to various shapes and strokes, laying the foundation for learning to write letters and numbers.
- Fine Motor Skills Development: Tracing helps children develop and strengthen the small muscles in their hands and fingers, teaching them how to control their hand and finger movements, which are necessary for performing essential tasks like gripping a pencil, using scissors, and eventually writing.
- Cognitive Development: Tracing helps children understand how to represent shapes on paper, which improves their focus and concentration, and enhances their visual-spatial skills.
- Hand-Eye Coordination: Tracing helps children focus their visual attention on their hand movements, thereby improving their ability to follow lines and shapes accurately.
- Creativity: Tracing helps children utilize their ability to trace lines to experiment with creating alternative ways to express their thoughts, thereby developing their creative expression.
- Confidence and Self-Esteem: Tracing gives children the ability to try and do more challenging tasks successfully, making them feel proud.
Back to School Line Tracing
This line tracing activity requires minimal preparation. To prepare it, you need:
- Back to School Line Tracing pack (found at the end of this post).
- Printer.
- White paper or cardstock.
- Laminator.
- Laminator pouches.
- Dry-erase pockets.
- Scissors.
- Glue.
If you want to use the Back to School Line Tracing activities individually, select the ones you want to use, print them on white paper, and have the children use a pencil, crayon, or marker to trace the lines. However, if you want them to be used multiple times, I suggest printing them on white cardstock, laminating them, or placing them in a dry-erase pouch, and then have the children use a dry-erase marker to trace over them.
These pre-writing activities can be used as a small-group activity, a Writing and Literacy center option, a take-home game, or a Quiet Area option.
Don’t Forget Your Stories
Reading and writing go hand in hand, and children cannot properly learn one without the other. That is why I always recommend including storybooks related to each theme, making sure you add new ones to your library, book baskets, and centers. These are some of my favorite back-to-school stories. You can find them at your local library, used bookstore, or Amazon. For your convenience, I added my affiliate links to each of the titles.
You need to click on the ones you want, and it will direct you to the Amazon website in seconds.
- The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn is one of my favorite books. This sweet book tells the story of a little raccoon named Chester, who is afraid to go to school. His mother kisses the middle of his hand to let him know that her love will always be with him, no matter where he is.
- How to Catch a Class Pet by Alice Walstead is a silly story that features an approachable school theme that kids will relate to, along with cute animal characters and clever rhymes that blend STEAM concepts with humor and chaos to encourage reading, learning, and imagination.
- Llama Llama Back to School by Anna Dewdney. Using her famous character, the author tells the story of this little llama who is anxious about his first day back at school, but maybe, with some help from his friends and Mama Llama, going back to school will be fun after all!
- The Little Book of Book to School by Zach Bush will help children face a new school year feeling confident and ready, using fun text and engaging illustrations.
- Our Class Is a Family by Shannon Olsen is a book that will help build and strengthen the class community. Kids learn that their classroom is a place where it’s safe to be themselves, it’s okay to make mistakes, and it’s essential to be a friend to others.
- The Night Before Preschool by Natasha Wing. The simple rhyming text and sweet illustrations of this book will soothe any child’s fears about the first day of school.
If you like The Kissing Hand as much as I do, you can find three free literacy, math, and science packs related to this story, perfect for the beginning of the school year and ready for you to download.
Use every opportunity to provide them with plenty of variety and choices, tailored to their different skill levels and interests, and most importantly, have fun while doing it. The children will pick up on your excitement, and it will give them the extra encouragement they need to stay engaged.
Pin It for Later
If you are in a rush and don’t have time to read the post and download the printable, but want to save it for later, pin it to one of your Pinterest boards.
Your free Back to School Line Tracing activities pack is below. I hope you find it useful. Enter your email address in the box to confirm your subscription, and the PDF file will open instantly, allowing you to print and save it. If you are currently a subscriber, you won’t be subscribed twice.
Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.
Love,
P.S. If you would like to see an article on a specific topic, please let me know, and I will do my best to write it for you. My goal is to help you in any way I can, and I take great pleasure in posting something that you might find helpful.
