“That’s in my name” Low Prep Letter Recognition Game for Preschoolers

Your child’s name is probably the first word they will learn to read and write.  Once they’ve learned how, and you are working on letter recognition, this is a very simple activity that you can do with your children.  You can do it at the chalkboard like we did, or on paper. T likes to play this frequently and we’ve adapted it to work on letter recognition (for the letters in her name) in books, on signs, and when I am writing things down.

Letter recognition is a starting point on the way to reading – recognizing that words are made up of letters and that all letters are different play a part in letter recognition. Finding the same and different letters to those in their name is a great start.  You can adapt this for different levels of ability. Children can start off with a single letter, and progress to the letters in their name, and then random words.

For the first of the year’s Virtual Book Club for Kids Weekly Themes, we have chosen Names. This activity is ideal to do as part of this theme with preschoolers that have knowledge of the letters that make up their name and are starting to learn more letters through playful and hands-on activities.

You can find 5 days of simple Name Activities to go along with this activity for the week over on our Virtual Book Club for Kids Site.

For this Easy Letter Recognition Activity, you will Need

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Chalkboard – we have this Melissa and Doug Chalkboard it proved able to stand up to two kids and their friends without any problems.

Chalk

Chalkboard Eraser

How to play “That’s in my name”

We started off by writing the name on the board and identifying the letters in her name.  T is getting really good at identifying her name and the letters in it as well, and she’s starting to attempt to write it as well.

One of my aims is to introduce more letters as we go so I decided to work through the alphabet. I started off by writing the letter and then drawing an object to represent the letter.

At the top of the board her name was written, and she found the letters from her name in the words.

I made sure that when it came to the T-word “train”,  that instead of a lowercase T, I used uppercase to match the T in her name.

Whilst we were going through the letters, T also traced over the main letter with her finger to get an idea of how the letters were written.

Once we got into the swing of it, and we’ve done this many times as it needs no set up apart from the chalks brought out, I got T to suggest words for each letter of the alphabet, working on beginning sounds of the words.

Name Books for Preschoolers

We try and suggest a few books that you can add to your reading box this week with your preschoolers. These are simple and enjoyable to share. The featured book is our top read for the theme of Names. The other 3 books we highly recommend to check out and see if you like them too.

Our featured book this week is Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. It’s a great book to read about names especially if your child has a difficult or unusual name.

More Name book recommendations for Kids

Andy That’s My Name by Tomie de Paola

A Porcupine Named Fluffy by Helen Lester

A my name is Alice by Jane Bayer

Even more ideas about learning to read, write and spell Names

• Name Spider Webs
• Bear Paw Names
• Build my Name Activity
• Snowball Learning Name Game