My four-year-old likes stories and pictures more than handwriting practice, which seems fair. I wanted to see if I could put all three on the same page.

I wrote a very short story in five beats, then made one workbook page for each beat. Every page has the illustration on top, a simple printed sentence to copy, and blank handwriting rows below it.

A complete handwriting workbook page with three skeleton pirates looking at a map above the sentence PIRATES FIND A MAP and blank writing rows

The trick that made it more interesting was also the least technical part. I covered the picture with paper and tape. After my son wrote the sentence, he got to “unlock” the picture underneath.

Skeleton Pirates

The public example is a five-page story called Skeleton Pirates:

  1. PIRATES FIND A MAP
  2. PIRATES SAIL THE SEA
  3. PIRATES DIG FOR GOLD
  4. MONKEYS THROW COCONUTS
  5. PIRATES RUN AWAY

I generated the child-friendly illustrations with Gemini’s Nano Banana image generator. The small generator I built pairs each picture with its sentence and lays out the handwriting rows, then produces a printable PDF.

A complete handwriting workbook page with skeleton pirates digging on a beach above the sentence PIRATES DIG FOR GOLD and blank writing rows

A complete handwriting workbook page with monkeys dropping coconuts toward two skeleton pirates above the sentence MONKEYS THROW COCONUTS and blank writing rows

This is still a private tool I use at home. Tref Software is turning the generator into a small public tool where parents can enter or adapt a short story and produce a printable picture-writing workbook. It is coming soon.