What order should you teach letters to write?

This order is for writing letters. The order for learning the sounds letters make is different, and both start with your child's first letter. See Should you teach letter names or letter sounds first?

Start with capitals and their name

Start with the first letter of your child's name, in capitals, then the rest of the name. Of seven things researchers tested that might make a letter easier for 3- to 5-year-olds to write, such as how many strokes it has, only one helped at every age. It was being the first letter of the child's name.

Capitals are easier to write than lowercase. Every capital starts at the top, and is made of lines and simple curves. Lowercase letters start at three different heights, and some, like b and d, differ only in which way they face.

For the whole name, see How to teach your child to write their name .

Leave lowercase until about 5, and teach it as a step of its own. Knowing a capital may not help your child with its lowercase letter. Start with c, o, s, v and w, which look like their capitals, only smaller.

Then go from the easiest letters to the hardest

After the name, work from the easiest capitals toward the hardest. If your child's school or preschool uses a handwriting program, follow its order and its way of writing each letter instead, so your child learns one way. The order below comes from a study that asked hundreds of children aged 3 to 5 to write each capital from memory as it was said aloud, counting a backwards or messy letter as right.

Children write many more letters from memory at 5 than at 3, so a 3-year-old who writes only a few is typical.

The ten easiest and the ten hardest came in a rough order, and the six in between in no clear order.

No one has tested teaching letters in this order, so treat the groups as a rough path, with your child's name ahead of all of them.

Mix letters up and bring them back

Practice about four letters at a sitting, and keep coming back to the ones your child already knows. Add a new letter as the old ones get easy. If your child's class does a letter a week, bring the earlier letters back at home. In kindergarten classrooms, short lessons that kept cycling back through the letters went with children learning more of them.

Don't practice 3 right after C. Children who have just written a C often write the 3 backwards.

Watch, trace, copy, then write it from memory

Take each new letter through these four steps, and move on from tracing soon. The goal is a letter your child can write with nothing to follow. For first graders who found handwriting hard, numbered arrows and writing from memory together worked best of the methods tried.

1. Watch it written, from the start dot, as you say where each stroke goes.
2. Trace it over a solid gray model, with a start dot and arrows. Learning Without Tears, a handwriting program used in many schools, prefers this to dotted letters, so your child sees the whole shape.
3. Copy it. Write it once and have them write it beside yours, looking at yours as they go. In a kindergarten study, children who copied wrote letters better than children who traced fainter and fainter models.
4. From 4, write it from memory on a blank page. Give them the start dot only if they get stuck.

What to expect at each age

Before letters, draw lines and circles together. Most children start writing some of the letters in their name somewhere between 3 and 5. That handwriting program starts with lines down and across at 2, and a cross at about 3. In a study of copying shapes, children copied a circle at about 3, a square at about 4 and a triangle at about 5. Puddlebright's Trace game has a Shapes mode with these strokes.

A child of 3½ who mostly draws and scribbles is where many children that age are. Plenty of children reach the goals below later.

The CDC's milestone at 5, which at least three in four children reach, is that a child "writes some letters in her name".

Common questions

How long, and how often?

Keep it to a few minutes at a time, spread across the week. No study tests this for letters at home, but it fits the classroom study above.

What if they refuse or get bored?

Stop and try another day. Next time, do one letter from their name.

My child writes letters backwards. Is that a problem?

Show the right way once more and carry on. Many children write some letters and numbers backwards for a while, mostly the ones that face left, such as J, and the numbers 1, 2, 3, 7 and 9. Children seem to expect writing to face right, so they flip the ones that don't.

At 5 and 6, it doesn't seem to be a sign of trouble on its own. In one study, children who later found reading hard were no more likely to write letters backwards.

What should we use?

Paper and a crayon are enough. That handwriting program suggests short or broken crayons for a good grip, and rolling playdough into snakes to make letters. On a phone or tablet, let them trace with a finger.

When should I ask someone?

If you're worried, talk to your child's pediatrician or preschool teacher, who know your child.

Where Puddlebright fits

I make Puddlebright. Its Trace game covers the first two steps, watching and tracing, for all 26 capitals, the numbers 0 to 9, eight shapes and your child's name. It says every step out loud, so your child can play before they can read. For copying and writing from memory, hand them a crayon afterwards.