Preschool Printables
For Teachers & Parents

Many parents and teachers use preschool printables (also known as worksheets) to help children practice certain skills like tracing, letter recognition, and coloring.

Printables can play a valuable role in the preschool classroom and at home, as long as they are balanced by plenty of hands-on activities. Simply having a child fill out worksheets all day long can actually defeat the purpose of learning, as children become bored.

That being said, there are many reasons why parents and classroom educators will want to use early childhood printables in their teaching.

Why Use Preschool Printables

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So when is it appropriate to use worksheets with preschoolers?

There are certain skills, for sure, that can only be learned by putting a pencil (or crayon as the case may be) to paper. Children need to learn how to hold a writing utensil correctly and having them use that pencil or crayon to color or write is good practice.

Learning how to write letters and numbers is another good reason to use printables. Young preschoolers can trace over the alphabet or numbers on worksheet papers (that often have arrows to help guide them). This is terrific practice for them!

Children also put into effect their fine-motor skills when they are using printables. Training the small muscles in their fingers to correctly hold a pencil/crayon and use small movements to color and write is a valuable skill they will use the rest of their lives.

Of course, like I mentioned before, printables can become overused. I used to have a colleague that assigned worksheets to her students the entire class time. The children were bored out of their minds and as a result, acted out (I don't blame them, I would have too!). The teacher had to be confronted and was asked to change her teaching habits.

As long as preschool worksheets are used in moderation, they can be a very helpful tool in teaching young children.

Types of Preschool Printables

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There are many types of early childhood worksheets that you can use at school and at home to teach the skill listed above. Here are some of the most common ones:

Coloring: Of all the types of worksheets, coloring pages are the most commonly used. There are, of course, many variations of coloring pages. Some are for free coloring, where the child choses his/her own designs. Some are color-by-number (or letter), where the child has to match each number space to its corresponding color.

Tracing: These worksheets are the kind that children follow the arrows, a faint outline, or dots to trace the shape, letter, or number that they are learning.

Dot to Dot: Many teachers will dismiss these as just "fun," but dot-to-dots teach a valuable skill - letter or number order.

Matching: There are many variations on this type of worksheet. For example, on the top of the page may be the letter A. The students then have to find all the pictures on the page that start with the A sound and circle them. Or the page may have pictures of adult animals on the side and the students have to draw a line from each to its matching baby animal.

Where to Find Preschool Printables

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Luckily, for teachers and parents, printables are not hard to come by! Here are some of my favorite places to find quality worksheets:

Printables Books:

• Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills, Preschool by Carson-Dellosa Publishing
• Big Preschool Workbook by School Zone Staff and Multiple Illustrators
• Brighter Child Workbook Series by Carson-Dellosa Publishing
• Preschool Prep Workbook (featuring all of the characters from Meet the Letters, Meet the Numbers, Meet the Shapes, Meet the Colors, Meet the Sight Words 1,2 and 3) by Kathy Oxley, Sherwin Rosario, and Nicholas Trujillo
• Preschool Basics by School Zone Publishing Company

Free Preschool Printables Websites:

• TLSBooks.com - Lots of choices for high quality worksheets.
• TeAch-nology - Has many free preschool printables, but also an option to upgrade to a membership to access thousands more.
• Nick Jr. - If your kids like the Nick Jr. characters as much as mine do, they will love the printables that feature them.

Paid Preschool Printables Websites:

• Enchanted Learning - Enchanted Learning has many free preschool printables, but the real value from their membership. It is really the only paid website that I belong to because the value is terrific - only $20 for a year! There are over 20,000 pages and browsing is ad-free.

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