‘Twas the Night Before Christmas Printing Practice

One of my best tricks for getting kids to not complain about learning how to print (or write in cursive) is using meaningful passages for them to copy. My oldest quickly learned how boring learning how to write can be when faced with simple phrases and sentences. It was quite a struggle until I let her take the lead and decide what words and phrases she wanted to practice. As she improved, I started introducing more complex but still meaningful passages. Good-bye tears!

 

 

This year I created copywork pages for one of our favoritie Christmas poems – A Visit from Saint Nicholas by Clement C. Moore.  Years ago my mother-in-law gave each of my girls one of those books that allows you to record your voice reading the book. They loved it so much they listened to it over and over and over again. They eventually memorized this story better known as ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.

 

Christmas Printing Practice

Each Christmas they bring out these books to listen to Grandma read to them again. I thought this poem would be a great way to practice their handwriting skills this year. Instead of just creating those practice pages, I designed it so there’s room for them to illustrate the story as they practice handwriting each day. This poem has such vibrant imagery!

Each page is split into two sections. The bottom half is for printing practice. The top half has room to draw a scene from copywork passage. Each stanza is takes up two pages so there’s plenty of room to copy the words. The lines are elementary sized with the dotted middle line.

In this printable, the poem is shown three different ways…

• the full poem with no handwriting lines in easy to read print font
• the full poem using a solid printing font
• the full poem using a tracing font for extra letter formation guidance

You also find…

• 11 blank lined handwriting pages with holiday borders
• 1 black lined handwriting page without a border

Once the child completes the poem, glue the pages onto construction paper and assemble into a Christmas keepsake booklet.

Grab Your Copy of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas Printing Practice here!

You can find the cursive version of this printable here.