At about three years old kids start learning the letters of the alphabet and one very important sight word- their name! When we did name recognition activities with my oldest son, Cannon, I had a blast coming up with tons of different ways for him to learn his name through play. There were no flashcards or drilling, just simple and fun activities that we did together. Now it’s Hunter’s turn to start name recognition activities and I can’t wait to come up with new fun ways for us to practice! This Name Recognition Soup was a great way to start us off.
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Supplies
- Alphabet beads
- Wooden spoons
- Bowl
- Marker
I labeled the spoons with each letter of Hunter’s name and filled a bowl with our alphabet beads. See what I mean about easy set-up? In less than a minute we were ready to play a game finding the letters of his name!
He was so sintkin’ cute spooning through the soup and concentrating on finding the letters of his name!
- Just for reference Hunter was actually 2 years 10 months here. He doesn’t yet know all the letters of the alphabet, but he recognizes several letters in his name so this was perfect.
We continued spooning for every letter in Hunter’s name until he completed the activity. Since this activity really is a quick one, we extended it by either doing it again (see extension idea below) or doing some pretend play 🙂
Ways to extend the activity: Ask your child to find a specific colored letter, like a yellow H, to add another element of challenge to the activity 🙂
We probably did this activity three times in one day. Hunter felt special having an activity that was all his own (one-on-one game time is tough with four kids under four! He appreciated having this game, and me, all to himself!)
How do you like to practice name recognition skills with your toddler or preschooler? Tag me in your ideas on Instagram (and don’t forget to follow us while you’re there!)
Looking for a toddler-friendly version of this activity? Check out my friend over at Busy Toddler and see their Alphabet Soup!
This is so cute! I love the little wooden spoons you used! I’m definitely going to be saving this one!
This is a great idea to practice with the children in order to recognize their name letters. As you have mentioned in order to extend the game, I also would do the same by asking the child to find his/her name letter by colors and then maybe as the child finds all the letters of the colors, I would ask him/her to sort the letters by the color. For example, I would ask for them to set aside all red colored letters, yellow, blue, and so on. I don’t want to push them too much though but then in order to further more in the game, as the child sorts each colored letters separately, I would ask the child to count each group of each color and then to compare which color group ha more letters.
Those are great ideas, Maria! I love that if recognizing letters is too much, kids could always separate by colors! Great ways to learn through play <3