The study assessed the impact of spatial and temporal constraints on handwriting movements in young children. One hundred children of 5-7 years of age of both genders were given the task of copying isolated cursive letters under four conditions: normal, with temporal, spatial, or spatio-temporal constraints. The results showed that imposing spatio-temporal constraints on handwriting movements affected 5-year-olds' performance, at least for a subset of letters (those with the simplest shapes). The constraints probably enabled young children to free themselves from the models and helped them to better program their movements. (Contains 2 figures.)