Firefly Flashlight Name Activity for Summertime

Grab a little flashlight for your preschoolers to practice spelling their names with this interactive summer name craft and activity.

Summer means staying up late, and that means fireflies! At least it does in some places (unfortunately we don’t have many here, but we see them when we visit cousins back East).

If your kids aren’t familiar with fireflies (a.k.a. lightning bugs) or want to hear more about them, you can read stories about fireflies and show this simple video of a little boy and his friend catching them.

Summer is also a great time for preschoolers to start working on learning how to write their names. Even before your little learners are ready to do much tracing or writing, though, they can practice spelling their names while pointing to each letter.

Firefly Flashlight Name Activity

I created this free name activity to use with a flashlight. Children will hold the light behind a firefly picture as they name each letter. This makes the firefly light up!

Below is another one to give you the idea. (These were hard to photograph, so you’ll have to look an extra beat.)

Kids can hold their name strip, or you can stand it up with a binder clip, like this:

Preparation and Materials

Once you download the free printable from the bottom of this post, you’ll need to open it with Adobe Reader so that you can type in your own students’ names. (It won’t work right if you just let Chrome open it).

Print these out on regular copy paper. Don’t use heavyweight paper – your little flashlight needs to shine through two layers of paper.

Here’s everything else you’ll need:

• Scissors
• Glue Stick
• Yellow highlighter pen
• Small flashlight

You can cut the letter and name cards out for your students ahead of time or, if their scissors skills are up to it, have them do it themselves.

Also, cut out the backing strips that are sized just right for gluing the firefly cards to.

How to do the Activity

Step 1: Glue and color the letter cards.

Students will put their firefly letter cards in order and glue them onto the provided backing strips. They can refer to their name printed on the flashlight card (shown at the bottom left on the photo below), or they can wait and look at that card to check their work before gluing.

Once the cards are glued down, they will color each firefly with a yellow highlighter. (Or, a yellow marker or crayon will work in a pinch.)

You also can differentiate this name activity to meet students at their level:

• More challenging: Print off extra letter cards. Then have children mix up all the cards and find “their” name letters.
• Easier: Use the backing strips with letters printed on them. Students can simply match the letters on the cards to those on the strips to spell out their names.

Step 2: Light up the Letters!

Once the fireflies are glued down the fun can begin! Find a less-bright area of the room and shine a small flashlight behind each letter. Read each letter out loud to work on letter recognition and name spelling.