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

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Chrysathemum

Chrysanthemum_(Henkes_book)

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

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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.

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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.

picture

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.

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

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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.

Comments

  1. Thanks Elizabeth for this detailed post! I’ve used a names unit for 2 weeks now. I noticed today that my sweet (but oh my goodness so new in kindergarten) kiddos, still don’t know a lot of their peers’ names. So, I’m going to incorporate your name of the day into my plans for September. I think that will work well since we have been doing activities with names already. They will love it! I’ll let you know how it went! Thanks again! Linda G.

  2. Thanks for the great idea, I think I’ll do this starting next month!

  3. Love this idea! I have many students that come to me with either no recognition of their name in print or they are unable to write their name. I am going to try this activity once we get through our color weeks. Thanks for the great freebies. You are a rock star girl!

  4. Elizabeth-Great plans! Thanks for sharing…can’t wait to use this in my class tomorrow!

  5. I did this with my kindergartners today with our first student. I had a student cry because she didn’t know how to write the letters and therefore, refused to, and my ESL student wrote his name several times all over the paper. Many of them did a good job trying to write, but this shows me how many struggle with writing and don’t know the letters. I’m sure it will get better the more we do this!

    • Lee Ann-
      Totally get it! Do you think that maybe you could dot the name of the day at the top so they could trace it instead of trying to write it themselves? I have to do that for a few of my kids. It might help with the frustration level of some of your friends that need some extra help 🙂 Good luck!

  6. Hi Elizabeth!

    I just LOVED your name of the day activity and started it in my class this week!
    I tweaked it a little and blogged about it if you want to come check it out! (with credit given to you and linked to this blog post of course!)

    I love your environmental print puzzle idea too! We will be starting our environmental print word wall soon 🙂

    Yukari
    http://apinchofkinder.blogspot.com