Preschool
Fine Motor ActivitiesSensory ActivitiesLanguage Arts
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Over the past few weeks, we have been working more and more on name recognition with the preschooler. At this point, he knows all of the letters of his name but putting them all in the right order and recognizing it as his name is still a bit fuzzy for him.
As with many other things, he seems to learn best when he can explore a subject with multiple senses so, in order to help him learn to recognize his name in print, we put together a simple salt tray so that he could not only see the letters and the order in which they go, but feel and create them himself.
This was probably one of the easiest activities to put together that we have ever done. In fact, I think it took a few minutes from start to finish.
The first thing I did was create cards with the letters of his name. I just typed these out on the computer in a simple font with each letter taking up a quarter of the page. Basically, each sheet, once cut, would create 4 individual cards.
To start our activity off, I gathered the cards and had him help me place them in the correct order so that they would spell out his name. Then we filled our tray with regular old table salt.
We actually tried out a few different “trays” but found that this square brownie pan worked perfectly. With the small handles on each side, it was super easy for him to shake the tray to flatten the salt in between letters without making a gigantic mess in the kitchen :)
Finally, we flipped through the cards, in order, and after tracing them with his finger, he created them all by himself in the tray.
Not only was this a great way to practice the letters in your child’s name, it is also a fantastic fine motor workout for their little fingers, not to mention, it’s a lot of fun! By the time we put it away, he had been playing with this super simple activity for almost an hour and has a much better grasp on both, the letters in his name and their order.
