Japanese Writing – Hiragana ま to り

💡Tips for Parents

▸ Why It Matters This fourth worksheet is where hiragana stops looking like fifty random shapes and starts looking like a system your child can actually reason about. まみむめも completes the third row of consonant+vowel pairs built the same way as あ行 and か行 before it: recognizing that ま is simply "m" layered onto the already-familiar あ, み is "m" plus い, and so on, means your child is no longer memorizing five brand-new shapes but applying a pattern they already trust. や, ゆ, よ arrive next, and while they look like ordinary characters here, they carry a second job later on — as "small y" sounds that combine with characters like き or し to write words such as きゃ or しゃ. Getting comfortable with their shapes and sounds now, while they're standing alone, means your child won't be learning something entirely new when combined syllables show up down the road. This worksheet also opens the ら row, the last new row before the alphabet's final few characters, so treat these ten characters as both a review of the "it's a system" idea and a preview of what's coming. ▸ Getting Started Have your child say each sound out loud while writing it — "ma... mi... mu... me... mo" — since the whole point of grouping characters into a row is lost if your child only sees five unrelated shapes rather than hearing the shared "m" sound underneath them. や and よ have noticeably fewer strokes than まみむめも, so treat them as a light, confidence-building warm-up rather than saving them for last. When you reach ら and り, the start of the next row, point out that consonant rows keep following the exact same vowel order — あいうえお — that your child already knows by heart, so they can often predict roughly how a new row will sound before writing a single character. ▸ If They Get Stuck ま and も are easy to mix up since both begin with the same two strokes — slow your child down at the very end of the character and point out that ま curls into a fully closed loop, while も finishes with a plain straight stroke and never loops at all. For り, which some kids try to write as one continuous squiggle, remind them it's actually two separate strokes that never touch each other, and have them lift the pencil clearly between the two. If your child forgets which sound goes with which shape mid-row, go back to saying the sound out loud before writing, rather than relying on the shape alone to jog their memory. ▸ Praise Points Praise your child specifically for noticing when a character is "the same as one you know, but with a twist" — for instance, spotting that ら starts exactly like り but adds one extra loop at the end: "You saw the connection between those two characters — that's exactly how hiragana is built, a little piece added onto something you already know." That kind of comment reinforces the systemic thinking this whole worksheet is designed to build, rather than praising only neat lines or a finished page.

🎯What This Worksheet Builds

This worksheet completes the third consonant+vowel row, まみむめも, and introduces や, ゆ, よ — the "small y" sounds — plus the start of the ら row. Recognizing ま as just "m" plus the already-familiar あ helps hiragana click as a system instead of fifty shapes to memorize.

👉Next Step

After まみむめもやゆよらり, move on to the final characters — わ, を, ん — and then to the katakana-01 worksheet, where these same vowel sounds reappear in sharp-cornered form.