Hey! It's Andrea from Always Kindergarten. I hope your school year is off to an amazing start! This time of year is always so much work and teachers are exhausted at the end of each day. This makes finding the energy to plan and prep really hard. I like to keep the activities simple and the prep to a minimum both for me and my students. Since we tend to focus a lot on names at the beginning of Kindergarten, I've put together 5 ideas for working on names that are low prep and a lot of fun!
At the beginning of the year, I write students' names on sentence strips. We use these for so many different activities. A fun community building activity is to have students find a friend who has one, two, or even three of the same letters in their name as they do. They love to look for similarities and differences in their names. We also find a friend with more letters, less letters, or the same number of letters in their name. It's great to get the kids talking and to learn each other's names in those first couple of weeks.
Some of our favorite tools to use for names (and word building) are letter tiles and magnetic letters. Students practice building their own names as well as the names of their friends.
Another great tool for strengthening fine motor and working on names are Wikki Stix! I have a love/hate relationship with Playdoh and sometimes, I just need a break from the mess it makes. Wikki Stix are a great alternative and the kiddos love bending and twisting them into the letters of their names.
Bean names, a classic activity! I write students names on construction paper with a pencil and then they glue on pinto beans. It's quick to prep and is fantastic for strengthening fine motor.
This is definitely one of my favorite name activities for the beginning of the year! We learn how to use watercolor paints to create name art! I write the students' names with a black sharpie and students paint inside the letters. It makes a beautiful bulletin board that you can keep up all year!
What are your favorite name activities? Let me know in the comments below!
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