Names, Names, Names! with a Freebie

I don't know about you all, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE teaching about names. There is no more authentic, engaging learning tool than each of your student's names!

We do name work for about the first month of school. My school does not teach "letters of the day" or "letters of the week," so letter work is integrated daily through learning from our names.

We start the year off with Star Students. Each student gets the "honor" for one day. This kiddo gets to do all the class jobs, be the line leader, and get a special sticker.

On this day, we also learn all about the kiddos name! I got a good part of our routine from this picture from Ketchen's Kindergarten and I made similar cards for my class. You can get those cards here.

The student is called up to stand in front of the class to help with their name work. We read a cute poem to start out Star Student called Everybody Has A Name.

**Say it: All students say the SS's name

**Cheer it: Spell SS's name in a cheer (Give me an S, give me an A...)

**Clap it: Clap the syllables in the SS's name (I often compare their name to previous SS)

**Count it: Count how many letters are in the SS's name

**Fix it: Write the kiddos name on a sentence strip, cut out each letter, and mix them up. My SS gets to choose friends to come up and fix their name. Then, we spell it together saying the letter names.

Then, the SS gets something very special. My kiddos watch me do a drawing of the star student. I talk about each body part as I add it. It is a great way to practice drawing people for writer's workshop later. Then, each of my kiddos go back and draw a picture of the SS. They all add their own little twists to it. We write the SS's name together on the paper to practice letter formation.

Then the SS gets to take home a book of all the pictures as a keepsake! Parents and kiddos love this!

After all of my kiddos get to be star student, they get to put their name up on the word wall. Can you believe I have 5 kids who have a name that starts with C?? 

We keep on trucking along by using tons of read-alouds to continue our name learning!

I'll update you more soon :)