Draw and Write Together: My Name

  • Between the Lions alphabet chart
  • chart paper
  • marker
  • name cards (one for each child)
  • alphabet
  • letter
  • whole

MA Standards:

Foundational Skills/RF.PK.MA.1: With guidance and support, demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of printed and written text: books, words, letters, and the alphabet.
Foundational Skills/RF.PK.MA.1.d: Recognize and name some uppercase letters of the alphabet and the lowercase letters in one’s own name.

Head Start Outcomes:

Social Emotional Development/Social Relationships: Uses socially appropriate behavior with peers and adults, such as helping, sharing, and taking turns.
Literacy Knowledge/Alphabet Knowledge: Recognizes that the letters of the alphabet are a special category of visual graphics that can be individually named.
Literacy Knowledge/Early Writing: The familiarity with writing implements, conventions, and emerging skills to communicate through written representations, symbols, and letters.

PreK Learning Guidelines:

English Language Arts/Reading and Literature 7: Develop familiarity with the forms of alphabet letters, awareness of print, and letter forms.
Mathematics/Data Collection and Analysis 15: Recognize one’s own name and familiar common signs and labels (e.g., STOP).

Draw and Write Together: My Name

© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.

Educator Prep: Print out the Between the Lions alphabet chart or create an alphabet chart on chart paper.

Display the alphabet chart.

Give each child his or her name card. Explain that everyone's name is made up of different letters. Have children look at the letters in their name and say, Let’s try to match letters in your name to letters on the alphabet chart.

Invite a volunteer to point to a letter in his name. Help him trace the shape of the letter with a finger. Then have him find the letter on the alphabet chart. Once he finds all the letters in his name, write the full name on the chart paper. As you read and point to each letter, help him trace it and say the letter name aloud with you.

After all children have matched the letters in their name, talk about the whole alphabet.

  • Point to the individual names on the chart. Say, All these names together make up our whole class.
  • Point to the twenty-six individual letters on the chart and say, All these letters together make up the whole alphabet!
  • There are <number of children> in our class, and there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet!

Take It Further: Gather children, with their name cards, in a circle around the Between the Lions alphabet chart. As you go around the circle, have each child say his or her name. Guide children to understand that the alphabet is a group of letters and that all of their names are made up of letters from this group of letters.

Adaptation: If you have a large group size or limited time, you may choose to have children find only the first letter, first and last letter, first initials, etc. in their names. Or extend the activity through the week finding one letter in each child's name each day until all the names are complete.

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