These fun name activities for kids are the perfect way to work on recognizing, sequencing, and remembering the letters of a name.
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We love using our favorite kids’ books to inspire fun, creative, hands-on activities that get kids moving and learning!
One of our most recent kid book discoveries comes from our friends at The Innovation Press. It’s a beautiful book called Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow. In this book, the main character leaves school upset because her teacher and classmates didn’t know how to pronounce her name. On their walk home, her mother teaches her how beautiful African, Asian, Black-American, Latinx, and Middle Eastern names are by showing her that these names are like songs.
The little girl begins to understand that even though her name might not be familiar to her classmates, it is special and beautiful!
After her walk with her mom, the little girl returns to school the next day with a new feeling of confidence and pride. She shows her teacher and her classmates how all of their names are like songs!
We read this book and immediately knew that it was the perfect inspiration for some fun activities to work on bringing focus to a child’s name! These name games are perfect for a classroom full of preschoolers or kids in kindergarten who are working on name writing practice and learning how to spell, write, and sequence the letters of their names. Here are the activities we came up with to work on both gross motor and fine motor skills.
What You’ll Need:
-Make Your Name a Song Printable (fill out the form below)
-Paper
-Markers/crayons/colored pencils
What to Do:
Activity 1: Make Your Name a Song!
Use the printable page to turn your name into a song! Help kids look through the alphabet to find the letters of their name and learn the different sounds associated with each letter. Have them learn the song of their name and perform it for their friends! The perfect preschool name activity!
Activity 2: Musical Name Writing
Have kids make “rainbow names”! Have them write their name in one color on a piece of paper. Then, have them trace over it using another color. Repeat with all of the colors of the rainbow!
But now it’s time to add a musical element! Play different types of music as kids are rainbow writing – fast, slow, upbeat, or melancholy. Can they write to the speed and rhythm of the music? Try playing music while kids rainbow write and then stopping the music randomly to see if kids can freeze and then start writing again when the music restarts!
How to Change it Up:
-Need extra support and ideas for handwriting? Check out our best handwriting tips and strategies.
-For kids who are not yet able to trace or write their own name, try using bubble letters to have them trace inside.
-Be sure to visit The Innovation Press to watch the video of the author of Your Name is a Song, Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow, demonstrating the pronunciations of all of the names in the book! Click here for the video!
-Try using other media for tracing and writing kids’ names – watercolors, dot markers, pens, etc.
Check out some of these fun name crafts:
Getting to Know You Activity Pack – Check out our favorite download for helping kids get to know more about their friends! Perfect for therapy room or classroom use!
Personalized Name Caterpillars
And don’t miss another one of our favorites from The Innovation Press: How to Survive as a Shark by Kristen Foote. We even have a whole sensory lesson plan to go with it!
