Preschool Name Activity and Craft
Inside: This preschool name activity has a fun, multi-sensory twist!
Teaching preschoolers to recognize their names can really spark their interest in letters. At the same time, multi-sensory activities make early literacy feel like play.
Put the two together, and you have magic!
Children will practice a skill over and over when they think it’s fun. And that repetition leads to mastery. Hooray!
Multi-Sensory Preschool Name Activity
This multi-sensory preschool name activity starts with tracing raised letters with dry fingers and finishes with a colorful name to admire. You can also talk about the names of the letters and make some of their initial sounds.
Materials
Here’s everything you need:
- Cardstock weight paper
- Scissors
- Pencil or permanent marker
- Regular white paper
- School glue or glitter glue
- Crayons
- Masking tape
Related: Summer Name Craft
Preparation
These do take a little prep, but I promise it’s super easy.
- Cut out a strip of cardstock in the size you want the name to be.
- Write the child’s name neatly on the cardstock.
- Trace the name with glue. Go back and fill in any gaps you left, if needed.
- Let the glue dry completely. This will take several hours (or if you want to have quicker results, you could use hot glue).
- Cut your regular white paper into strips slightly smaller than the cardstock strip.
Instructions
Once the prep is done, your preschool name activity is ready for little hands:
- First, the child traces his or her name with an index finger or with the index and middle fingers together. Talk about the letters as they feel them.
- Next, tape a strip of paper securely on top of the name card.
- The child can either rub over the paper with the side of a crayon, or he can scribble on it. His name will ‘magically’ appear!
Extend Your Preschool Name Activity
After your little ones get the hang of it, you can add one of these fun twists to extend their learning:
- Children with more advanced fine motor skills can trace the letters on their rubbing sheets.
- You can also make a version of this activity where you cut apart the letters and have the children put them in the correct order.
- Color/ rub each letter with a different color crayon to build awareness and letter recognition.
Once children are ready to start learning to write their names, they might like my personalize-able name tracing worksheets too.
If you’re looking for even more ideas, check out my apple themed fall name activity too.
Little kids take so much delight in seeing their very own name in print. It’s the perfect stepping stone to get them interested in letters and letter sounds. I hope you have fun and success with this preschool name activity.
Happy Teaching,
Heather
