The free connect the dots puzzles below are designed for those students that are just beginning to learn how to count to 100--a skill that usually begins in Kindergarten or in preschool and may continue on into the 1st Grade.
There are six different dot to tod puzzles to choose from.
Each one of the puzzles will increase in difficulty, meaning that the number your child will need to be able to count up to will increase. The simplest puzzle starts out at one and counts up to fifty. The remaining puzzles all count higher by a multiple of ten. So the second puzzle counts up to 60 and the third goes up to 70 and so on until you complete the final connect the dot puzzle which goes up to 100!
For younger students that are not quite able to count that high yet, I've also created some dot to dot worksheets for counting to twenty and thirty. You can find those puzzles in the related lessons section at the bottom of this page, but for now, let's print out some activity sheets!
Printing out your puzzle is easy. Just click on one of the images below. This opens a printable file in another tab. Then you can print or download your paper.
Dot to dot puzzles are a great to practice learning how to count, but you can also use them to improve your child's handwriting! Drawing the lines between dots is going to help your child to work on her fine motor skills.
Every time that he does a puzzle, its a chance to focus on proper pencil grip and control. I cover these topics more in my lessons on handwriting and cursive, but you could absolutely use the same ideas here while you're connecting the dots.
Make sure that your child doesn't rush through connecting all of the dots. That tends to happen with my children, especially when they can visualize what the finished picture is going to look like. Instead, be sure to take the time to make nice, neat, straight lines between the points. This will help them to have better pencil control and hopefully will translate well to better handwriting later on.
When you've connected the dots, you can focus more on proper grip by having your child color in the pictures.
Who knew you could do so much with a simple "Connect the Dots" puzzle?
For help with numbers and counting or to see more free connect the dots puzzles, try these pages: