Grade 1 handwriting paper

The ⅝ inch ruling used in first grade — a step down from Kindergarten, with the dotted midline still in place.

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Opens with these settings already loaded. Change anything you like, then download as PDF, PNG or SVG.

The step down from Kindergarten

Kindergarten paper is 1⅛ inches; first grade is ⅝. That is nearly half the height, and it is a big jump for a five- or six-year-old. Children who struggle with the transition usually need more descender space rather than a larger ruling — open the skip up before you go back to the bigger paper.

Letter families, not the alphabet

Handwriting is taught faster by grouping letters that share a stroke than by going A to Z. The straight-line family (l, i, t, L, E, F), the curve family (c, o, a, d, g), the diagonal family (v, w, x, z). Each family sits differently against the midline, which is why the guide lines matter more than the paper size does.

Left-handed writers

Left-handers benefit from paper turned slightly clockwise, and from a margin on the right rather than the left so their hand is not dragging over what they have just written. The margin rule position is fixed here, but printing landscape or simply not using the rule works around it.

Printing it accurately

This only measures correctly if your printer doesn't rescale the page. In the print dialog set Scale: 100% — not "Fit to page" or "Shrink oversized pages". If you're not sure it worked, print the calibration page, measure the ruler on it with a real ruler, and it will tell you exactly what your printer is doing to the page.