Cursive Letter B Worksheets

Cursive b is a tall loop with an unusual ending. Start at the baseline, run a long upstroke to the top line, loop back down the same path, come all the way to the baseline, then curve back up to the midline and stop there with a short flat checkstroke pointing right. That final stroke sits halfway up the line, not on the baseline, and it is the whole reason b behaves differently from every letter around it.

The midline exit is what makes b hard

Only four lowercase letters finish at the midline: b, o, v and w. Because b hands off high, the letter after it has to start high too, so br, be, bo and bl all look wrong if the child joins them at the baseline out of habit. Practise the join, not just the letter: write br, bl and be as pairs before writing whole words, and the classic bad b disappears on its own.

An l that learned a new trick

The upstroke and loop of b are identical to cursive l, so if l is already smooth, most of b is already in the hand. What is new is the turn at the bottom and the flat finish. Children who exit b at the baseline are really writing an l with a tail, and the word bed then reads as led. Slow the last third of the letter down and the difference becomes obvious.

What the printable sheets contain

The big letter sheet gives B and b at extra large size, solid model first and three dashed copies after, with a blank ruled band at the foot of the page. The uppercase and lowercase sheet has the pair demonstrated at 96 point, then seven capitals, seven lowercase and four Bb pairs on three line guides. The words sheet traces bat, bed and big, which put the awkward b join in front of a, e and i.

Why does cursive b end at the middle line?

Because b is one of the four checkstroke letters. Its exit is a short horizontal bridge at the midline instead of the usual undercurve at the baseline, so the following letter is entered from above. Capital B is a different problem: it ends with a small loop that many teachers allow to sit unjoined before the next letter.