Fun with our Names!

My little friends have been so busy learning/reviewing all sorts of literacy foundational skills before we can fully dive into guided reading. I’m so thankful for my super sweet little friends this year and I already can tell some of them just need a tiny little push and then they’ll be closer to being on target with the rest of their peers.  One thing I’ve been working on with my little kinder-friends is getting to know how to write & spell their names…and kinda at least have an idea of some of the letters in their name.  I have a very small amount of little kinder-friends that can easily write their names without any assistance, but as the weeks go on, they are getting so much better! So today I’m linking up with Holly for a Tuesday Tried It with some new activities I tried out that are all about names!

This one lesson was jam-packed with activities, all revolving around practicing names. First my little friends found their name on a name tag, then they had to rearrange their name (from cut up letters on sentence strips) to make their name in the correct order.

Then they drew a picture of themselves and wrote their names on a little postcard. (Had these in my cabinet for at least 3 years and had bought them for $1.24 a long time ago from the clearance rack at Target…glad I FINALLY made use of them!)

I then gave them each an envelope with their name on it (also came with the postcards). We put their postcard and cut up names inside the envelope.  I did this so we can repeatedly use these name cards throughout these next few weeks. Easy way to just keep them all contained in one safe little spot for each student!

Then we added iPads into the mix…they took pictures of each other and then had to use the envelope to recreate the other student’s name- they wrote it on their iPad (in Skitch) and used the sentence strip cut up pieces to make the other child’s name. They loved this of course because it is just so fun to see your friend’s picture on the iPad! This was a nice way to expose them to other letters and help them practice putting things in order.

I also had my little friends choose an envelope and then recreate the name on the envelope using the sentence strip pieces.

Making our names with letter tiles:

 Writing our names on the iPads (in ShowMe):

 During a read aloud, giving a thumbs up when the beginning letter of your name shows up:

L M N O Peas by Keith Baker

Echo reading sentences on the board and then coming up and drawing a squiggly line under letters in your name: