Turn screentime into storytime.
Here we are—seven days until the school bell rings again. It's been a wonderful summer filled with lake days, boat rides, and a memorable trans-Atlantic family trip. We ate sweet corn, picked tomatoes, and had the inevitable screen time debates that define modern parenting.
But somewhere between the pool days and popsicles, reality hit: my third-grader's summer reading list has been gathering dust on top of the microwave, and our soon-to-be kindergartner doesn't quite know all her letters yet. (Though she's surprisingly good with numbers, despite consistently skipping 14.)
So here I am, frantically searching the world wide web for letter tracing worksheets in preparation for a pre-school cram session and wondering where we went wrong.
I desperately want to be that chill parent who says, "That's what school is for—let's set up the pool! Damn! It’s got a hole in it!" But it's hard not to compare when your friends' kindergartner is already reading graphic novels independently.
In the parent world, a child who "LOVES TO READ" is the ultimate prize. It means smooth parent-teacher conferences, perfect small talk at birthday parties, and having the kid who reads quietly during a sibling’s baseball practice instead of the one licking rocks.
I may be extra sensitive about this because I wasn’t a rock licker. Reading came naturally to me. As a writer and publishing professional who's spent 15 years developing literacy materials for elementary students, I never needed worksheets. I devoured Goosebumps and The Baby-Sitters Club like my Subaru plowing through snow.
My oldest son followed the same pattern—reading bumper stickers at an alarmingly early age (thanks, neighbor with the "Shitbox" sticker) and constantly trying to decode the world around him. Watching him fall in love with reading has been one of my greatest parenting joys.
But my daughter? She's different. And that's okay.
This isn't just parental anxiety talking. Children really are struggling with reading nationwide.
In Minnesota alone, recent data shows that more than half of students between 2021 and 2024 failed to meet reading standards. The Minnesota Department of Education has responded by launching the Family READ Toolkit to help parents support their children's literacy development.
If you've been paying attention to education news, you know reading scores have been declining for years—well before COVID-19 and distance learning reared their ugly N95-masked heads. The pandemic certainly didn't help, but this crisis has deeper roots.
Surprisingly, how children learn to read isn't settled science. For decades, educators have debated the best approach, leading to what literacy experts call "The Reading Wars." (For an excellent deep-dive into this topic, listen to APM's investigative podcast series "Sold a Story.")
Here are some of the most prominent literacy movements:
For years, many educators believed humans are natural readers, just like we're natural speakers. The "whole language" theory suggested that children would learn to read simply through exposure—give kids enough books, and they'll figure it out naturally without drilling "boring" foundational skills.
In the 1990s, many schools adopted "balanced literacy," combining whole language with some foundational skills. Teachers encouraged students to make strategic guesses based on pictures and context—a strategy called "cueing."
While this worked for some children, it left struggling readers without essential tools. As kids age, books necessarily become more text-heavy with fewer pictures. There goes the guessing game.
Current research strongly supports what many of us millennials experienced in the late 80s and early 90s: systematic phonics instruction. (Remember those "Hooked on Phonics" commercials?)
Phonics teaches children that written language is essentially a code. Give kids the tools to crack that code—the relationships between sounds and letter combinations, AKA phonics—and they can read anything.
Yes, it can feel repetitive. Yes, it requires memorization. But research consistently shows phonics is the most reliable way to teach reading, especially when taught systematically with explicit instruction.
So will letter tracing worksheets and memorization crush my daughter's budding LOVE OF READING before it has the chance to bloom? Almost certainly not.
In fact, alphabet tracing worksheets and phonics practice provide the foundation children need to engage with literature independently. Think of worksheets not as creativity-killers, but as tools that unlock future reading freedom.
If the speed at which my daughter memorized the entire K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack is any indication, she'll master those letters just fine. Maybe she'll become a natural reader like her brother and me. But if not? Bring on the worksheets.
The internet is full of alphabet tracing worksheets, but most are, frankly, pretty ugly. Since my daughter loves to color, I created beautiful, engaging letter tracing worksheets that make practice feel more like play.
Download our free letter tracing worksheets here and give your child the foundational skills they need for kindergarten success—without sacrificing the joy of learning.
