Cursive handwritingGrades 2–4
Cursive J
A one-letter cursive page for J and j, with a big model, tracing lines for both cases, and three practice words. It suits children in grades 2 to 4 who are learning descenders.
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On this page
Small j looks like an i that falls below the line. The capital J is another surprise: it drops under the baseline like a descender.
On the page
The title reads "Cursive J: Capital J and Small j", and the first thing you see is an oversized Jj. After it, the worksheet moves down the page in a fixed order. Capital J gets two lines, small j gets two lines, and a line of the joined trio jjj follows. The last stretch is the words jam, jet, jump, one line each, plus a blank line at the bottom.
Kimberly Geswein's Cedarville Cursive supplies the letters. It is an informal, natural hand and not a named method, which means your school's version of some letters could differ. Capital J on the model has a top curl and a long tail that loops under the baseline.
Options
- Letter (A a to Z z), preset to J j.
- Line size: Large (beginners), then Medium, then Small (confident writers). Pick Large if your writer's strokes wander off the baseline.
How to form small j
Start at the baseline with an upstroke to the midline, then bring the stem straight down below the baseline. Loop to the left and back up, crossing the stem at the baseline, and finish with a flick. Add the dot above after the word is done.
How to form capital J
Begin with a curl at the top, bring a long stem down past the baseline, and loop back to the left. Some programs finish with a short upstroke to the right. A caution: schools differ. The strokes given are Zaner-Bloser style, while D'Nealian or the printed model could draw this capital another way.
Letter group and joins
Small j shares the undercurve start with i, t, u and w, and the descender loop with f, g, y and z.
The loop crosses the stem at the baseline and finishes with a flick, which gives a clean join into the next letter. In 'jam', the flick goes right into the a.
Common slips
Without the loop, j looks like a print j with a hook and the join is lost. The dot is often forgotten, which turns the letter into a stem. Another slip is a descender that drifts to the right, so the loop never crosses the stem.
Worked example: writing jump
Owen, age nine, practises 'jump'. His j has no loop at first, so the u starts from the wrong place. His teacher shows the loop crossing at the baseline. He tries again and the flick lands on the u. Then comes the m and the p, which has its own descender. Owen waits to add the dot until the whole word is complete, then writes jump alone on the last line and checks that both descenders reach the same depth.
Next steps
Once these lines look even, the lowercase cursive letters page gives you every small letter in one set, and cursive k comes next in order. Before this letter, you may want cursive I.