Name Recognition

One of the first things I wanted to work on with Maverick was recognizing his name. I had already spent quite a bit of time pointing out the first letter in his name, the sound, other things that start with M, etc.

Here are the supplies we used for this activity: white construction paper (printer paper is probably too thin for this activity), liquid glue, a marker, and "o" cereal.
First, I went through and pointed to each letter in his name, said it out loud and had him repeat me (later that day I made up a little song for Mav to learn to spell his name). We then glued O cereal on an outline of the letters in his name. Of course he LOVED using the liquid glue all by himself (can we say messy?).

I had done this project with my kindergartners last year at school and they were able to do their whole name, however, Maverick is much too young for that so we started with the first letter. After the first letter, I asked him if he wanted to do another letter, and he did, so I let him choose which one. That was about all he had the attention span for. Since this project involves food, I had told him before we started that he could eat some cereal after the project. Of course, you could eat at any point in the project, but I used separate cereal since I didn't want him eating glue.
This is a really great hands-on project that keeps them quite focused for a while...especially when they get to eat as part of the project!

Another fun name recognition activity is what I call "The Secret Message" project. We used water color paints, white construction paper and a white crayon. I had written his name in white crayon on the paper beforehand.

I told Maverick I had written him a secret message and he needed to paint the paper to see what the message said.

With a 2 year old, the watercolors get all mixed up in the little paint pods, but I realized I needed to get over this because he could care less and water colors are super easy to clean up!

The hidden message revealed!

Once he had finished, I asked him what he saw and he said, "it says Maverick James Madedaden," which is how he pronounces his whole name (SO cute but I reminded him it was just his first name of course).
I make sure to write his name on EVERYTHING we do and let him know that's what I'm writing. Sometimes he asks to write his name, which is just a line, but these are all important pre-writing and pre-reading skills.