Cursive Worksheets for Grade 3
Joins, words and short sentences. Third graders review the capitals as sets, take on the bridge joins after b, o, v and w, and move from word lists to their first complete sentences.
14 printable cursive worksheets were written for grade 3, across five skills, 114 ruled lines of practice between them. Every sheet prints on US Letter or A4 with four-rule guided lines, and none of them needs an account.
Skills at this grade
Uppercase Letters(3)
All uppercase letters →Cursive Capitals A to I Review — Grade 3
Grade 3 review of cursive capitals A to I: the row of 9 letters traced and copied, then 9 capitalized words that start with them. Free printable PDF.
Cursive Capitals J to R Review — Grade 3
Grade 3 review of cursive capitals J to R: the row of 9 letters traced and copied, then 9 capitalized words that start with them. Free printable PDF.
Cursive Capitals S to Z Review — Grade 3
Grade 3 review of cursive capitals S to Z: the row of 8 letters traced and copied, then 8 capitalized words that start with them. Free printable PDF.
Letter Connections(4)
All letter connections →Cursive "br" Connection Worksheet — Grade 3
Grade 3 bridge-join sheet for the cursive br connection: trace and copy the pair, then six br words. Free printable PDF on one page.
Cursive "oa" Connection Worksheet — Grade 3
Grade 3 bridge-join sheet for the cursive oa connection: trace and copy the pair, then six oa words. Free printable PDF on one page.
Cursive "ve" Connection Worksheet — Grade 3
Grade 3 bridge-join sheet for the cursive ve connection: trace and copy the pair, then six ve words. Free printable PDF on one page.
Cursive "we" Connection Worksheet — Grade 3
Grade 3 bridge-join sheet for the cursive we connection: trace and copy the pair, then six we words. Free printable PDF on one page.
Word Practice(2)
All word practice →Cursive Days and Months Words Worksheet — Grade 3
Nine days and months words for grade 3 in cursive: Monday, Friday, Sunday, March, April, June, July, August and October. Free printable PDF.
Cursive School Words Worksheet — Grade 3
Nine school words for grade 3 in cursive: pencil, paper, ruler, desk, teacher, class, recess, lunch and book. Traced and copied. Free printable PDF.
Sentence Practice(4)
All sentence practice →Cursive Sentence Copying: Daily Journal for Grade 3
Grade 3 students copy 4 journal sentences in cursive, then write their own. 26 words on one printable page. US Letter or A4. No sign-up.
Cursive Sentence Copying: Franklin Sayings for Grade 3
Grade 3 students copy 4 short quotations from Benjamin Franklin in cursive, then write from memory. 22 words on one printable page.
Cursive Sentence Tracing: Fun Facts for Grade 3
Grade 3 students trace and copy 4 fun-fact sentences in cursive, then write their own. 24 words on one printable page. US Letter or A4.
Cursive Sentence Tracing: Pangrams for Grade 3
Grade 3 students trace and copy four pangram sentences in cursive, practicing letter connections with sentences that include every letter of the alphabet.
Themed Worksheets(1)
All themed worksheets →Nearby grades
Written for grade 2 and grade 4, not for grade 3, but close enough in the hand to be worth a look: a student who finds the sheets above too easy or too hard usually wants one of these next.
Cursive "an" Connection Worksheet — Grade 2
Grade 2 pair-tracing sheet for the cursive an connection: trace and copy the pair, then six an words. Free printable PDF on one page.
Cursive Paragraph Practice: Declaring Independence — Grade 4
Grade 4 students copy a 33-word passage, "Declaring Independence", in cursive, then continue in their own words. Free printable PDF on one page.
Cursive "ch" Connection Worksheet — Grade 2
Grade 2 pair-tracing sheet for the cursive ch connection: trace and copy the pair, then six ch words. Free printable PDF on one page.
Cursive Guided Writing: My Favorite Season — Grade 4
Grade 4 students copy a 32-word model, "My Favorite Season", in cursive, then write their own version. Free printable PDF on one page.
Cursive "in" Connection Worksheet — Grade 2
Grade 2 pair-tracing sheet for the cursive in connection: trace and copy the pair, then six in words. Free printable PDF on one page.
Cursive Copywork: Rain — Grade 4
Grade 4 cursive copywork: 24 words from Rain by Robert Louis Stevenson (1885), a line per ruled row, then blank lines. Public domain text, free printable PDF.
What is on this page
14 of the 14 sheets on this page were written for grade 3 specifically, and none are borrowed from the grades either side. The skills covered at grade 3, largest first, are Letter Connections (4), Sentence Practice (4), Uppercase Letters (3), Word Practice (2) and Themed Worksheets (1).
Across those sheets a grade 3 student works through 82 exercise blocks and 114 ruled lines: 37 copying rows, 27 tracing rows, 14 free-writing rows with nothing printed and 4 model letterforms to study. The proportion matters more than the total — a year with a lot of tracing and little free writing is a year still building the movement, and one with more free writing than tracing is a year using it.
The letterforms a grade 3 sheet covers
No single-letter sheets are filed at grade 3. By this stage the letterforms are assumed and the work is joins, words and longer passages.
Four letter connections are covered at grade 3: br, oa, ve and we, which sit at positions 16 and 21 and 25 and 26 of the 30 joins this site teaches. A connection sheet is not a letter sheet with two letters on it — neither letter is new by then, and the exercise is the join itself, specifically not lifting the pencil across it.
What a grade 3 student actually copies
The grade 3 sheets put 160 distinct words and letter groups in front of a student, averaging 4.4 letters each. That average is the number to check before printing a set: a handwriting sheet that makes a child decode the word before writing it is testing two things and reporting one.
Seven exercise types appear at grade 3 — transition practice, sentence copying, sentence tracing, mixed, letter tracing, word copying and word tracing, across daily journal, famous quotes, fun facts, halloween, days and months, school and pangrams themes. Within a sheet the order is always the same and the support comes away one step at a time: a model to look at, a traced line where the shape is already there, a copied line where it is not, and often a blank one at the end.
Before and after grade 3
Grade 3 is one of six grades this site publishes for, and cursive is unusual in how much a sheet moves between them: every sheet in the main list above was written for grade 3, and the nearby-grades block shows a few from the grades either side. If grade 3 lands badly, the grade 2 page and the grade 4 page are usually the adjustment rather than a different skill — the hand is the limit, not the reading. Doing the next sheet the same day is usually wrong; the hand needs the gap more than the head does.