I have a mixed age preschool with kids ranging from three years old to five years old. I love having a mixed age group because my kids can teach each-other, which is fun for the younger kids and very empowering for the older kids.
When we work on our names in the Fall, as a part of our name study, I have to make sure to provide activities that engage ALL my kiddos even though they are at varying stages of readiness. I thought I would share some fun ideas that we have out for our Center Time this week! What I love about these activities is the chance for the younger kids to work on name recognition and name building even if they are not yet ready to write their name. It also allows the kids who already know how to write their name to complete that task, and then move on to working on friends names, or other word-blending activities of their choice.
When we work on our names in the Fall, as a part of our name study, I have to make sure to provide activities that engage ALL my kiddos even though they are at varying stages of readiness. I thought I would share some fun ideas that we have out for our Center Time this week! What I love about these activities is the chance for the younger kids to work on name recognition and name building even if they are not yet ready to write their name. It also allows the kids who already know how to write their name to complete that task, and then move on to working on friends names, or other word-blending activities of their choice.
Our Initial Activity
Before starting Center Time this week the kids had to complete their "Ticket to Center Time". We will do this each day to give them lots of practice. I pre cut a bunch of paper strips and wrote each child's name in highlighter. For my younger kids this was using all capital letters. For my older kids we are working on writing a capital first letter, and lowercase for the rest. This gives them a nice challenge. The kids need to do their best to write their name. This is so much better than any of the dot-to-dot letter practice. Highlighters work wonders for easy and clear letter formation.
Letter Stamps
This activity gets the younger kids working on: letter recognition, letter order in their name, letter matching if they use their "ticket" to help them spell their name as they stamp, and some fine motor work! For my older kids it was fun to see them work on word blending and lower-case recognition!
Wooden Letters
Put out some bins with wooden letters and a list of the ALL the names in your program and let the kids explore. Most of my older kids worked on forming the names of their friends or family members. My younger kids worked on letter recognition and their own name!
Letter Beads
There are all different kinds of letter beads available. I liked these beads because they were big, had large holes for lacing, and they were colorful and fun for the kids to explore. For the first part of the week we are using them to build our names or other words, and at the end of the week we will lace some name necklaces!
Letter Stickers
Kids LOVE stickers, so I figured we should have some letter stickers out for our name study. Creatology makes a letter tub, and I put them out in a container that had a center spot for the sticker backs. This kept our work area tidy. The kids could pick out a piece of colorful paper and go on a search for the letters in their name!