7 Name Journal Activities for Preschoolers
As you may or may not know, we are home schooling my oldest (4) for pre-k this year. To start the year off, we did an All About Me theme and focused on really driving home the letters in his name. He knows all of the letters in his name and knows how to spell his name, but occasionally gets mixed up on lowercase “a,” and “e,” and is still working on learning to write his name. Before we moved on to a different letter each week, I just wanted to take a little more time to practice his name- plus it went well with the theme!
We love using our active learning journal as a way to practice different skills, and themed pages are especially our favorite. You can check out my friend Theresa’s blog for more information on an active learning journal and her brilliance behind it all! You can also find lots of other themed journal activities on my site such as dinosaur-themed journal activities, watermelon-themed journal activities, ocean-themed journal activities, and zoo-themed journal activities.
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Since Kade is still learning to write his name, we are doing lots and lots of tracing practice. One way to make tracing more fun, is to switch up the utensils that you use! For this activity, I provided Kade with a crayon, a pencil, a marker, and a pen to trace his name with. I’m not sure that he’d ever really gotten a chance to “write” with a pen so this was fun for him. He has probably colored with all of these different utensils but to actually use them as a way to practice writing his name was a whole new experience.
I wrote his name out in yellow marker for guidance, and I also provided small dots and arrows to help him know where to start and which direction to be writing in. We have these pencil grips that I occasionally throw on his pencils (used it on the pen for this activity, too) to encourage correct pencil grip but I try not to stress that too much quite yet. We are working on finding that balance between not developing poor habits (writing with a fist- which is his go-to right now), but also not discouraging him by constantly correcting or forcing him into something that feels foreign (which is how a proper grip feels to him still at this point).
Find and cover activities are a favorite for journaling! There are so many variations of ways to use an activity like this one and different skills to cover with it, too. For this particular journal activity, I used some of our colored painters' tape and wrote out the letters in his name each several times on different colored pieces of tape. He used his scissors to snip off each letter, and then he had to find it in his journal and place the tape over it.
Using his scissors to snip off each letter was a great way for him to practice holding scissors, and opening/closing them- this also builds fine motor skills! I wrote the letters in his journal as lowercase, and the letters on the tape all as uppercase so that he had to really think about finding the matching letters. He loves when I let him use my fancy colored tape and he’s also been really into using his scissors lately so this one was definitely a hit.
We did this journal page during the couple of days that we were learning about our five senses. It went really well with discussing our sense of touch as he was using his finger tips to squish into the ink pad, and form each letter in his name. He got to choose a different color of ink for each letter, and the ink wiped right off his finger (with a baby wipe) in between each letter (these are brand new- I was not about to start mixing colors yet… ha!)
We busted out the colored tape again for this one. I wrote Kade’s name on different colored pieces of tape and stuck them in different directions all over a journal page. I used masking tape to put letters on these snap cubes in coordinating colors. I put all the snap cubes loose in a basket and he had to spell his name in each color, and then match them to the piece of tape in his journal. This activity works on letter recognition, spelling their name, fine motor skills (connecting the cubes), color matching, hand-eye coordination, and spatial awareness (by matching the cubes to the tape- similar to completing a puzzle).
Here is another fun way to practice identifying letters, spelling out their name, and also writing the letters. I drew Kade’s name in block letters at the top of the page for him to color, and then wrote blank spaces to fill with letter stamps, and wrote in some letters with yellow marker to be traced. You can see that we used the pencil grip again for this activity to encourage a proper grip.
This is a great one to do in a preschool classroom with a group of kiddos who are working on recognizing their names. Since we are doing preschool at home, I used names from our family including our “baby” on the way! I wrote them all out a couple times in Kade’s journal and had him use a marker to find and circle his name. This gave him another opportunity to practice gripping a utensil, and drawing circles is also always great writing practice.
Here is another activity where we used the names of our family members. I wrote each name out in Kade’s journal, and then put all the coordinating magnetic letters into a sensory bin with dyed beans as a filler. You can check out this blog post here that shares the original activity I did with these dyed beans and how I dyed them. I gave Kade our magnetic wand and let him sift through the beans to find letters. As he pulled letters out, he matched them up in his journal until he spelled out each name.
We talked about what letter each name started with in order to help him determine whose name it was. You’ll notice I also set out some silicone cupcake liners in coordinating colors for my 2-year-old to color sort while Kade worked on his letters.
Kids love when things are all about them- that’s why starting out teaching them letters by using the letters in their name is so effective. ;) I have another post with more name practice activities for toddlers that you can check out here if you want more!
Be sure to pin this to pinterest if you think you may want to try any of the activities out, and if you do- tag us on social media so we can see. It makes our day!
