Halloween Cursive Practice for Grade 3
Trace and copy 12 Halloween words in cursive, from costume to night, plus the sentence "We carved a pumpkin with a big smile.", for grade 3. One printable page.
About this worksheet
A Halloween themed sheet for grade 3: 12 seasonal words (costume, candy, mask, spider, ghost, moon, pumpkin, lantern, bats, treat, spooky and night) in two traced rows and two copied rows, one copied sentence, "We carved a pumpkin with a big smile.", and 3 blank lines for the student's own Halloween sentence, 8 guided lines in all. Every word and the sentence were written for this sheet. Between them the Halloween words and sentence use 21 of the 26 lowercase letters, 6 of them tall (b, d, h, k, l, t) and 3 that drop below the baseline (g, p, y).
Halloween Cursive Practice for Grade 3
Trace the pale letters with your pencil. Then copy each word and the sentence on the blank lines. Finish with your own Halloween sentence.
Trace each Halloween word in cursive: costume, candy and mask.
Trace spider, ghost and moon.
Copy pumpkin, lantern and bats on the line below.
Copy treat, spooky and night on the line below.
Copy this Halloween sentence on the line below.
Write your own Halloween sentence about a costume you would wear, in cursive.
How to form these letters
- The lowercase letter s appears 7 times here, as in "costume". Undercurve to the midline, curve back down to the left, close against the stroke at the baseline and exit forward.
- The lowercase letter o appears 6 times here, as in "costume". Undercurve to the midline, close the oval, and exit from the top of the letter with a short bridge stroke.
- The lowercase letter p appears 6 times here, as in "spider". Undercurve to the midline, stem straight down below the baseline, retrace up and round a closed bowl at the midline.
What the sheet asks the hand to do
Halloween Cursive Practice for Grade 3 is six blocks and eight guided lines. Two of tracing, three of copying and one of free writing. The order is a traced row where the shape is already there, a copied row where it is not and a blank block with nothing printed at all, so the support comes away one step at a time rather than all at once.
The words on Halloween Cursive Practice for Grade 3 are costume, candy, mask, spider, ghost, moon, pumpkin, lantern, bats, treat, spooky, night, We and carved, and four more: eighteen distinct words, averaging 4.8 letters, the longest "costume" at 7 against a grade 3 limit of 10. Word length is the number to check before printing: a handwriting sheet that makes a student decode a word first is testing two things and reporting one.
Each block carries its own instruction rather than one set of directions at the top — the first reads “Trace each Halloween word in cursive: costume, candy and mask.”, the last “Write your own Halloween sentence about a costume you would wear, in cursive.”. That is what lets the sheet be handed to a student who is working alone.
The text on the page
The text on Halloween Cursive Practice for Grade 3 runs to 20 words, averaging 4.7 letters each, with "costume" the longest of them. That is the number that decides whether a sheet is a warm-up or a session: at this stage a child's hand tires before their attention does, and a page of long words tires it faster than a page of many short ones.
Between them the rows on Halloween Cursive Practice for Grade 3 use twenty-one of the twenty-six lowercase letters — a, b, c, d, e, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, v, w and y. Six of them are tall letters (b, d, h, k, l, t), which is what makes the ruled height on this sheet matter, and three drop below the baseline (g, p, y), so the descender space is in use too.
Where this one sits
Halloween Cursive Practice for Grade 3 is one of four Themed Worksheets sheets here and one of fourteen written for grade 3. It is mixed work, and it suits grade 3 and grade 4.
The closest things to Halloween Cursive Practice for Grade 3 are Back to School Cursive Practice for Grade 1 (grade 1) and Fall Cursive Practice for Grade 2 (grade 2). Cursive is one of the few subjects where doing the next sheet the same day is usually wrong — the hand needs the gap more than the head does — so those are the ones for tomorrow rather than for the rest of this session.
Notes for the grown-up
- The 12 Halloween words (costume, candy, mask, spider, ghost, moon, pumpkin, lantern, bats, treat, spooky and night) are the vocabulary a grade 3 student meets in the season; the sheet is a chance to write words the student wants to write.
- Watch that the pencil lifts only between words, not between letters, on the sentence "We carved a pumpkin with a big smile."
- Ready to move on when the copied words sit on the baseline and the freewrite sentence about Halloween is joined all the way through each word.
Practice this next
More from themed worksheets and grade 3.
Fall Cursive Practice for Grade 2
Trace and copy 12 fall words in cursive, from leaf to brown, plus the sentence "The red leaves fall from the tree.", for grade 2. One printable page.
Thanksgiving Cursive Practice for Grade 4
Trace and copy 12 Thanksgiving words in cursive, from turkey to autumn, plus the sentence "Our whole family gathers around one long table.", for grade 4.
Back to School Cursive Practice for Grade 1
Trace and copy six back-to-school words and a short sentence in cursive, built for Grade 1 and Pre-K/K students just beginning joined handwriting.
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.