10+ Hands-On Ways to Practice Names in Preschool, Pre-K, & Kindergarten AND Build Fine Motor Skills

[@bmylove4444]

Do you have trouble transitioning the kiddos from writing their names in all uppercase to the conventional way? A lot of the kids I work with have a hard time switching to something different after they've learned how to do it one way, so a principle I go by is "teach it the correct way the first time" even if it means it'll take longer but your reasons are convicting so I'm not sure what to do.

[@littleslovelearning]

This is such a timely question as I'm working with my kindergarten class right now to transition them to writing their names with lowercase letters. I think of it this way...I would never teach a student to read long vowels and vowel teams before they've mastered short vowels. There's a developmental order to instruction. That's how I feel about handwriting...I think there's a developmental order to writing where students start with uppercase and develop the pencil strokes/hand strength before moving to lowercase. I have some students who are writing their names in lowercase, but their strokes are wrong. Their a's look like circles with lines and their n's look like horsehoes with a line added on top (I'm sure you can picture it!) I would have preferred if those students wrote their names in all uppercase letters with appropriate pencil strokes than lowercase letters with the wrong pencil strokes (because I"m having a hard time breaking them of those bad habits). Yes, it does take patience (on my part!) to help my students transition to lowercase letters. But it's been going because I've been consistent with having them fix their name each day. (And if it takes the rest of the year, I'm okay with that, too!) However there are always exceptions...if you're working one on one with a student and can watch them form every letter every time, you might be able to get away with starting with lowercase. But that's not possible for most of us!

[@bmylove4444]

@@littleslovelearning That makes a lot of sense and I completely understand what you're saying. I think my way of tackling the transition will be to tell them from the beginning that there will be one. I'll constantly show them the correct way at the beginning of each lesson, but I'll say we're working on the uppercase letter first so that our hands and fingers can build up their "muscles" or something cute like that. I'm wondering if I can make a little chant we can say at the beginning of each lesson so that it's ingrained in their heads that its NOT the right way to write their names. I'm also going to think about a good analogy of something you have to build up too that would be intuitive to preschoolers... maybe crawling to walking? Anyway, thanks as always for your thoughtful responses! I've learned so much from you and your videos, hoping to use my teacher experience to help my own children and those I get to teach in the future.

[@littleslovelearning]

@@bmylove4444 I love these ideas!! Thank you for sharing so that other teachers watching this video have good food for thought! I appreciate this early childhood community because we all bring so much to the table and help each other become better educators. What a gift for our future students!