Zebra Line Tracing

These zebra line tracing worksheets give your students some pre-writing fine motor practice and introduce the letter Z with its initial sound. Add this to your Zoo unit!

Many preschoolers enjoy using dry-erase markers and tracing lines with crayons. Yes, you should also be doing lots of hands-on activities like working with playdough and small manipulatives, but I think there is also a place for interesting worksheets — IF your children are interested in them.

Skills Covered

This free printable helps your students work on the following skills:

Fine motor: Develop eye-hand coordination using a marker or crayon to trace different shaped lines.

Letter sound correspondence: Help students associate the /z/ sound with the letter Z. You can reinforce this further by repeating the word “zebra” and the /z/ sound aloud as you talk about the activity.

Letter recognition: Each tracing strip has a letter z somewhere in the picture on the right-hand side, either alone or as part of a word like Zoo or Zebra. Encourage students to find the letter Z.

What’s Included in the Free Printable

This 6-page free printable consists of a 3-page color version and a 3-page black & white version. Each zebra line tracing page has 4 sections.

Preparation & Materials

You can leave the pages whole, or cut them apart into strips.

Color Version

You can laminate these, or simply slide them into a dry-erase pocket. Personally, I love how easily dry-erase pockets erase, and that they are less wasteful and less work.

For supplies, you will want to offer several colors of dry-erase markers.

Black & White Version

The black & white tracing strips are great for kids who love to color, and for sending home. They also help you save your color ink.

For supplies, you’ll want to offer crayons, markers, or colored pencils.

How to Play

Let students choose which strips they want to trace. You may also want to combine this with a letter Z activity that is more “hands-on” such as forming a Z out of playdough or tracing it on a sand tray.

When should you teach the letter Z?

Should you teach the letter Z at any particular time? Many teachers cover it near the end, and not just because it’s at the end of the alphabet. Here are a couple of other reasons to teach it later than other letters:

• It’s used less frequently in words.
• We want to teach it much later than the letter S so that children don’t confuse S and Z.

On the other hand, if the letter Z is particularly relevant to a child — such as if their name starts with Z — then, by all means, talk about it sooner. (I love using name letters to introduce the alphabet!)

Download the Free Printable

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More Zoo Activities for Preschool and Kindergarten

If you’re planning a zoo unit, you may want to include these Zoo Name Tracing activities found in my store:

You might also like this activity for the book Put Me In the Zoo, this Giraffe Phonemic Awareness game, or these zoo hats [coming soon!].

Happy Teaching!