Teddy Bear Tracing Activities for Preschoolers

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Teddy Bear Day is celebrated on September 6. Since children love teddy bears, I think you can use this theme to help preschoolers develop very important pre-writing skills with these FREE Teddy Bear Tracing activities.

Adding these activities to your September lesson plans will attract children’s attention, and will only take a few minutes to get them ready.

Teddy Bear Tracing Activities for Preschoolers

This printable includes four sheets with four different tracing activities each. You can get it at the end of this post.

Importance of Tracing Activities

Young children love to scribble and explore their abilities. This is considered the emergent writing stage of their development, which is an essential step for them to start writing letters and words.

When you offer preschoolers multiple opportunities to trace, you are helping them refine important skills such as:

Fine motor skills – tracing builds up strength and coordination between their hands and fingers, which will allow them to have a better grasp of the writing and painting utensils, and control their movements.

Hand-eye coordination – they have to look at the lines and move their hands along them to be able to trace them.

Creativity and drawing skills – when they create movements to trace the lines, they are making connections on how they can use the same movements to draw on their own.

Concentration and focus – when they pay attention to follow the lines with their writing tools.

Visual-spatial awareness – tracing gives preschoolers the opportunity to practice spatial vocabulary (below, behind, next to, etc.), and make sense of the relationship between the lines.

Uses for the Teddy Bear Tracing Activities

There are many uses for these Teddy Bear Tracing Activities, and the best part is that you don’t have to limit the possibilities to just tracing the lines. You can also use these tracing sheets in many ways, taking into consideration the different levels of development of your preschoolers’ skills. Some of the ideas I can give you are:

Small Groups

You can use these activities to prepare small group activities in different centers, such as a writing center, take-home game, and quiet area option.

Finger Tracing

Have your preschoolers trace the lines with their fingers. That will give them a sense of how the lines go. Don’t forget to tell them to go from left to right, since that is the correct direction to write.

Grasping

Have them grasp a pom-pom with a clothespin, and have them “trace” the lines using the pom-pom. This particular activity will have them working on their fine motor skills more because it will force them to use their pincer grasp, which is essential to learn how to grasp a pencil correctly.

Stamping

Children love this particular and simple activity. Give them some small Teddy Bear stampers, to be used following the direction of the lines. The children will be especially interested if you provide stampers. Remember that changing the materials, toys, and routine a little bit will keep them interested.

Pasting

The use of stickers is also great to work on those fine motor skills because when children peel and paste stickers they are getting the opportunity to work on those finger muscles and concentration. Give your children some Teddy Bear stickers for an extra kick, and to paste along the lines.

Marking

If you are using an unlaminated sheet of paper, you can have them use crayons, pencils, or regular markers to trace the lines. If you laminate them or place them inside dry-erase pockets, then have your preschooler use a dry-erase marker to trace the lines.

Using Small Manipulatives

Remember that it is important to offer variety and choices to help your preschoolers develop their fine motor skills, and using small manipulatives is a great way to do it.

There are many Teddy Bear-related small manipulatives that you can add to your writing and manipulative centers, to switch things around and keep them interesting. Some of them are buttons, mini pencil toppers, sequins, or counters. Present the tracing sheets and the small manipulatives to your children, and simply invite them to choose one type and line objects along the lines. To make sure your children are successful in this particular activity give them an unlaminated sheet of paper, instead of a dry-erase pocket. Otherwise, it will be too slippery, which could cause frustration in your children, something you definitely don’t want.

Using Playdough

Invite your preschoolers to roll fine playdough snakes, and place them on top of the strips to form the lines.

Cutting

These activities can also be used as cutting activities instead of tracing, using safety scissors.

To prepare these low-prep activities, simply download the file at the end of this post, print them in white cardstock, and laminate them or place them in dry-erase pockets, if you want to use them multiple times, or just print them in regular for a single use.

Books About Teddy Bears

I am a huge fan and user of storybooks for everything, and I wanted to include some of my favorite books about teddy bears.

Pin It For Later

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