Recognizing Name in Print

One of the "goals" or state standards for preschoolers is to be able to recognize their name in print.  Little Man and I have been working on this for a little while now.  He also has to do a few tasks every morning of preschool that will help with this as well.

I decided to make up a little game for us to practice this skill.

I took some scraps of construction paper and cut up little "cards" for us.  Then I wrote names on the cards.  I wrote some names of people he knows--me, family, friends--and some names that start with the same letter as his to try to make sure he isn't just recognizing the first letter.

 

We played two games with these cards.  First we played a memory game.  This is just a good skill regardless of what you are matching.  I made the rule that for this game, it didn't matter who had the most matches, whoever ended up with Little Man's name cards was the winner.

Then we played my own made up version of Old Maid.  I took one of the Little Man cards out and made his name the Old Maid.  I told him that whoever ended up with his name card WON!  This entire concept of holding cards, matching cards, laying down matches, drawing from my hand, etc. was all a little hard.  However, Little Man loooooves playing games, so he stuck it out and kept wanting to play over and over.

 

Ultimately it doesn't really matter at this point if we are playing "right" or not.  The point was to give him more exposure to his name in print and hope that he can be able to pick it out on his own.  Again, it's about making it relevant.