Free · print at home · ages 3 to 5
Letter O worksheets and tracing
A perfect little circle, pretending to be the octopus's mouth.
“That's not the octopus. It's o! A perfect little circle.”
Watch it write itself
See o write itself
It starts at the green dot and goes the way the arrows go, in the same order your child traces it. Press Slowly and follow it with a finger.
Tap O to see the capital write itself too.
On a phone or tablet, Bring it into your room puts the letter on your floor or table, through the camera. No app to install.
How to write it
How to write o and O, in words
One line for each stroke, to read aloud while your child traces. On the sheets: the top line, the dashed middle line, and the base line, where the letters sit. If your child's school uses a different style, follow the school.
Small o
- Start at the green dot on the middle line, at the top of the letter. Go round to the left, down to the base line, round the bottom and up the right side, all the way back to the dot.
Capital O
- Start at the green dot on the top line, in the middle. Go round to the left, down to the base line, round the bottom and up the right side, all the way back to the dot.
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Letter O tracing worksheets and coloring page
Five sheets for O and o: tracing the capital and the small letter, the small o only, the capital O only, a coloring page and a find every o page. US Letter and A4, black and white first, then color.
Letter O o tracing worksheet
O and o on the road with arrows, then fainter, then from the dots alone. Then the word octopus.
1 page · PDF
Small o only
Four rows of o, from the road to the dots alone. Then the word octopus.
1 page · PDF
Capital O only
Four rows of O, from the road to the dots alone, and a line to write on.
1 page · PDF
Letter O coloring page
A big O and o with eyes to color, and a box to draw the octopus it hides in.
1 page · PDF · black and white
Find every o
A page of letters, many of them look-alikes. Color every o, then count them. The answer is upside down.
1 page · PDF · black and white
Free for home and classroom use. To pass them on, please share the link to this page and not the file. The whole alphabet at once (the ABC chart, the A to Z tracing booklet and the desk strip) is on the alphabet page.
For show and tell
Things that start with O
Everyday things a child can carry to school for letter O day. The first one is where o hides in our book.
- orange
- owla toy one
- olivesa small jar, closed
- ornamentan unbreakable one
- overalls
- oatmeala packet
- origamia shape you folded
- ottera stuffed one
- oven mitt
- onion
- octagoncut from paper, like a stop sign
The book's game, with no screen
- Print the letter. The coloring page works well: your child colors it first, then it goes into hiding.
- While nobody is looking, hide it in something that starts with its sound: in the empty bath next to the octopus toy, or behind a jar of olives.
- Say the sound together, as the book does: “o, o, o... Where can o be?” When your child finds it, they trace it with a finger and shout “Got you, little o!”
Animals
Animals that start with O
Tap one with an arrow to meet it on our dinosaur pages.
- owl
- octopus
- otter
- ostrich
- orangutan
- orcaanother name for the killer whale
- ox
- opossum
- oyster
- ocelota wild cat with spots
- okapia cousin of the giraffe, with stripes on its legs
- Oviraptora dinosaur once wrongly called the egg thief
Good to know
Start at the top, and go round to the left
A circle sounds easy, but there are lots of ways to draw one. Small children often start at the bottom, or go round the other way.
On our sheets, o starts at the top and goes round to the left, exactly like c. It's worth getting right now: a, d, g and q all start with that same move.
Questions
Grown-ups ask
- How do you write a lowercase o?
- Start at the top, on the middle line. Go round to the left, down to the base line, round the bottom and back up to where you started. It's a c that keeps going until it closes.
- Why should o start at the top?
- Because a, c, d, g and q start the same way: at the top, round to the left. A child who writes o that way already knows the first move of five more letters.
- What starts with O for show and tell?
- A toy octopus (where o hides in our book), an orange, a toy owl, an oven mitt, a paper octagon or a stuffed otter.
More letters
Our own book
Catch the Letters! A Bedtime Alphabet Book
By Katia Sunn · for grown-ups · coming soon
In the book, o hides in the octopus. Your child finds it, traces it with a finger, and catches it. Every letter hides somewhere in the house, inside a thing that starts with its sound.
Every letter page has a code: scan it with a phone or tablet and the letter comes into your room.