Cursive Animal Words Worksheet — Grade 2
Nine animal words for grade 2 in cursive: cat, dog, pig, cow, hen, fox, owl, bee and ant. Traced and copied. Free printable PDF. US Letter or A4.
About this worksheet
This grade 2 word sheet puts 9 animal words in front of the student, cat, dog, pig, cow, hen, fox, owl, bee and ant, across 6 blocks and 9 guided lines. The first two groups, starting with cat, are traced and then copied, so the model is still on the page when the student writes unaided; the last group (owl, bee and ant) is traced only. Between them the grade 2 animal words use 16 of the 26 lowercase letters, 6 of them tall (b, d, f, h, l, t) and 3 that drop below the baseline (f, g, p).
Cursive Animal Words Worksheet — Grade 2
Trace each word along the pale letters, then write the words again on the blank lines. Keep all the letters in a word connected.
Trace each animal word, following the pale letters.
Copy cat, dog and pig on the lines below.
Trace the next group, keeping every letter joined.
Copy cow, hen and fox on the lines below.
Trace the last group of animal words.
Write the names of two more animals in cursive.
How to form these letters
- The lowercase letter o appears 4 times here, as in "dog". Undercurve to the midline, close the oval, and exit from the top of the letter with a short bridge stroke.
- The lowercase letter g appears 2 times here, as in "dog". Close the oval at the midline, drop a straight stem below the baseline, loop back left and rise to the baseline exit.
- The lowercase letter w appears 2 times here, as in "cow". Undercurve to the midline, down, undercurve again, down, then a short bridge stroke that exits from the top.
What the sheet asks the hand to do
There are six blocks on Cursive Animal Words Worksheet, nine guided lines between them. Three of tracing, two 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 Cursive Animal Words Worksheet are cat, dog, pig, cow, hen, fox, owl, bee and ant: nine distinct words, averaging 3.0 letters, the longest "cat" at 3 against a grade 2 limit of 8. 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 animal word, following the pale letters.”, the last “Write the names of two more animals 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 Cursive Animal Words Worksheet runs to 9 words, averaging 3.0 letters each, with "cat" 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 Cursive Animal Words Worksheet use sixteen of the twenty-six lowercase letters — a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, l, n, o, p, t, w and x. Six of them are tall letters (b, d, f, h, l, t), which is what makes the ruled height on this sheet matter, and three drop below the baseline (f, g, p), so the descender space is in use too.
Where this one sits
Cursive Animal Words Worksheet is one of nine Word Practice sheets here and one of sixteen written for grade 2. It is word tracing work, and it suits grade 2 and grade 3.
The closest things to Cursive Animal Words Worksheet are Cursive Family Words Worksheet (grade 4) and Cursive Food Words Worksheet (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 nine words here (cat, dog, pig, cow, hen, fox, owl, bee and ant) average 3.0 letters. Watch that the pencil lifts only between words, never inside one.
- Word spacing is the thing to check on a word sheet: one fingertip between cat and dog, and the same gap all the way along the row.
- Ready to move on when all nine animal words are written with every letter joined and the baseline held from cat to ant.
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