Cottage Handwriting Lines

Since February’s subject blog focuses on printing and penmanship skills, I’m sharing with you some free printable templates for handwriting lines.

We designed these printables a few years ago and have used them briefly with one or more of our children who needed a little extra guidance for lettering position. (We sort of drew our former “log house” and called it a cottage.)

They are available in a few different sizes in order of development stages are as follows. Please click on the words to download a pdf of the kind(s) you would like.

Cottage Handwriting Paper RBBR Large – (large width, 4 lines) – suggested for kindergarten, grade 1

Cottage Handwriting Paper RBBR Small – (smaller width, 4 lines) – suggested for grades 1- 2/3

Cottage HW Paper Progress to 3 lines – progressing to 3 lines instead of 4 – suggested for grades 2+

Cottage HW Paper Progress to 2 lines – progressing to 2 lines – suggested for grades 2/3+

Cottage HW Paper Progress to shared lines – progressed to shared lines – suggested for grades 3/4+

Cottage Handwriting Paper ALL 5  – All of the above 5 pages in one pdf file – Note: Pages 3, 4, and 5 represent the type of handwriting paper more commonly found exercise books in stores.

How to Use These Printables:

You would begin at whatever level your child is at, regardless of the “grade suggestions”.

I’d suggest only using it to print the alphabet and a handful of common words (e.g. family names) – like using it for practice for only a page or two of each kind of paper. Use exercise books with wide-enough lines for most days.

Personally, I usually do not print off “blank” writing paper for our children/teens since I think, if I did so as a regular habit, I’d be wasting ink and it gets more costly. (I don’t print off blank “report paper” or “journal paper” either for them since I think they should use their own creative skills to make their own borders and graphics. Our family does some copywork (e.g. notes) but those also are not usually on the same sheet of paper as they are writing on.)

In other words, I would not suggest that you print off tons of these pages for your children because I think that would be unnecessary. However, these printables CAN be helpful as a tool for teaching and practicing the concept of letter positioning – where the letters go on the lines.

What does our family use most of the time instead of “printable writing paper”?

When our kids/teens write on paper for either practicing regular skills or making a special report, they simply use ordinary lined or fully blank paper or write in what is traditionally known as “lined exercise books”. Over the years, we have also sold the red-blue-blue-red lined ones of various line widths for the beginner/primary levels as well as the lined-blank-lined-blank “assignment books”. We did so because it was difficult to find those kind of exercise books in stores. At the time of writing this blog post, we still have some in-stock for sale but they are not currently listed in our products in our shop. The graphic (right) shows sample lines from those RBBR exercise books to understand what I’m referring to.)

However, occasionally, I make an exception to printing writing paper and these “cottage handwriting lined printables” represent that. 🙂