In my last post, I shared some whole-group name-games I have picked up over the last couple of years. However, students also have to learn to read and write their names as quickly as possible when they get back to school!

Here are some of my favorite classroom routines and activities we use to get name writing!

1. Dry-erase sleeves: Download a tracer font, and write their name several times on a piece of paper. This is re-usable and can be done whole-group. After we practice it several times and they know how to use the dry-erase markers, this becomes the very first activity at writing center!

2. Trace their name with items/paint: Write their name on a half piece of construction paper. They can cover it up to write their name with small stickers, bingo daubers, or q-tips and paint depending on what you have on hand. These become easy first art projects to hang up in the classroom and display their names!

3. If you are brave...You can also do the above with cereal or small ripped pieces of paper. Depending on your students, you can allow them to use the glue or you can walk around with a bottle and have them do one letter at a time.

4. Rainbow Tracing: I make them a tracer page with their name written seven times. We watch each color song on YouTube in rainbow order. We listen to the song for the letter red, everyone holds up their red crayon, and we trace our names in red. We repeat for all other colors or as long as their attention is held!

5. Pocket Chart: I make a set of all their names on sentence strips. I put one set of the full class names at the Pocket Chart center with cards that say "I am" and a "." for the end. They can build "I am (Michelle)." and repeat for all their friends names. Then they can take turns being "teacher" and reading the sentences.

6. Tweezers: Using a sentence strip, you can provide them with plastic tweezers and they "trace" their name with cereal, cotton balls, buttons, pom-poms, or anything else small. This helps them build their hand muscles to better write their names! This is a good first work work center to start the year as well.

7. Name Puzzles: There are good templates for this on TPT, but it is just as simple to write their name on a sentence strip and cut apart each letter yourself! Then they take it apart and put it back together. I give each student a box that has their name puzzle, and magnetic letters to build their names, as well as a laminated sentence strip they can use as a guide.

8. Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom: Get foam letters and have them stick them on a coconut tree craft you make after reading the story. I pre-place letters that will be needed for the names in a bag by table--for example, if I have "Lucy", "Meg", "James", and "Quentin" at a table, their letters will all be mixed in one bag. This way they still have to search for the correct letters, but it is less time-consuming and frustrating!

9. Post-it-Note Puzzle: Make them a name puzzle with post-it notes. They can build their names, or stick the letters on an ABC line to begin to identify the letters in their names!

10: Fun-stuff!: Think about what you have around already in your classroom and let them build their names: sand, salt trays, colored rice can be placed in bins. Play-doh is fun if you teach them how to roll it out and create letters! Any small manipulative (mini-erasers are perfect for this!) you have on hand you can place at a table, give them a name-tag or sentence strip to use as a guide, and let them explore! You can rotate materials between tables and create your first center rotation with this early in the year.


Happy name writing!

Ms. M