Name of the Day {Freebie}

 I’ve had a lot of questions about name of the day and what I do for that part of the morning. I can tell you…this is not my idea and it’s not that difficult to do. I have taken a lot of different ideas from my team-mates from the past couple of years and just molded it in to my own “Name of the Day” morning routine for the first couple of weeks of school.

A few books that we like to read to go along with names are:

A My Name is Alice

Chrysathemum

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Here is the order of how we run through Name of the Day.

One child gets to be “Name of the Day”. Some of my team-mates call it queen or king of the day. I let the student come sit in the teacher chair and we write their name out. I make sure to emphasize the capital letter at the beginning of their name. I write the vowels in red and we talk about the different letters. It’s such a good activity to start the year off with because it brings awareness to letters and the correct way to write their name. Most of my kids come to me writing their name in all caps. It’s a hard habit to break and I think that doing this every day helps practicing some of those skills that we really want to focus on at the beginning of the year.

After we look at their name, we cheer it. Then, we count the letters in their name. They tell me how many vowels, consonants, and syllables that are in their name.

Then, there is a series of questions that I ask the student. I let them use the echo microphone to answer the questions.

To get a copy of the questions that I ask, click here.

I only write down a few of the answers that they give and we use those answers to write in the speech bubble when we are done. I let the kiddos pick which one they want to write in the speech bubble. The name of the day goes on the black line at the top. The student that is doing the drawing writes their name at the bottom.

This is the PERFECT time to talk about adding detail to pictures, adding a background, adding color that makes sense {i.e. no pink hair}. We talk about drawing people with body parts and no “M&M people”. I model with them and create my own name of the day person while they draw along with me.

Each student illustrates a picture of the person that is the Name of the Day. They might add more detail to the picture by adding something like a football if the student said that they like playing football.

Here is a picture of my student teacher drawing along with them.

While we are modeling, the students are doing their own pictures at their seats.

We do this everyday until every student has had a turn. The reasons I continue to do this activity is for a couple of reasons:

1. I like the ritual of it. They know what to expect.

2.It bring awareness to their name and they learn each other’s names in a meaningful way.

3. The become more aware of their illustrations and become detail oriented.

The name of the day pictures that go home with the first student don’t look anything like the ones that go home with the last student. The last couple of kids might have to wait the longest, but they get to take home the best drawings.

I write their name on a sentence strip and make it in to a hat. I take a picture of them and stick it on the front of a folder. The student that was the name of the day for that day gets to take their pictures home to share with their families.

They LOVE it.

If you want a cliff-notes version of how it goes:

1. Write their name. Write the letters, vowels, consonants and syllables that are in the name.

2. Interview the student with the questions. Write down 5 things that students could write in the speech bubble.

3. Give each student a picture with a speech bubble and have them write the name of the day at the top, a picture of the student, a word in the speech bubble and their name at the bottom.

4. Write the student’s name that is the name of the day on a sentence strip. Snap a picture and stick it on the front of a folder for the student to take home their class-mates pictures to share with their family.

Done and done.