Cursive Letter A Worksheets
Cursive a is an oval that closes at the top and then retraces its own right side, which is the part that gets skipped. The page runs big letter, then the pair, then ant, art and arm, and closes on a sentence.
Curated by 
Poppy Fox
Cursive A Sentence
A whole sentence to trace and then copy: An ant ate an apple. Joining letters inside real words is the step single letters cannot teach.
Download PDFLowercase cursive a starts on the right side of the letter, which surprises almost everyone the first time. Begin just below the midline, curve up and over to the left, travel all the way around the oval and close it firmly at the top where you began, then retrace straight back down the right side to the baseline and swing out with a small undercurve. It is one continuous motion with no pen lift.
Close the oval or it stops being an a
The single fault that spoils cursive a is a gap at the top. Leave the oval open and the letter reads as ci or as u, and a child soon cannot reread their own writing. Watch the closing point rather than the overall shape: if the pen touches its own starting line before it heads down, the a is correct. Capital A is that same oval built taller with a straight downstroke on its right, so the two forms are worth learning in the same sitting.
Where a belongs in the teaching order
Cursive a opens the downcurve family, the letters that all begin with the same over and around entry: a, c, d, g, o and q. Most sequences introduce it after the simple undercurve letters i, t, u and l, because by then the hand already knows how to finish a letter on the baseline. Once a is secure, d and g cost very little to add, since they are the same oval with a different ending.
What is on the three sheets
The big letter page prints A and a at 88 point, a solid model followed by three dashed copies, so the oval can be built slowly with the whole arm rather than the fingers. The guided page sets capital and lowercase side by side, then gives rows of seven, and ends with two empty ruled lines under the prompt "Now on your own". The words page traces ant, art and arm, each with a solid model, two dashed copies and a blank ruled row beneath.
Why does cursive a start on the right?
Because the oval is drawn counter clockwise. The pen enters at roughly the two o'clock position, sweeps left across the top, down around the bottom and back up to close where it began, then runs down the right side to exit. Starting at the left would force the hand to reverse direction halfway through, which is a different motion entirely.