A child will naturally be interested in recognizing, and later writing, his/her name. You can make the process of learning their name fun with this playdough name activity. This name learning activities is fun for toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergartners. You will love that this hands-on playdough activity and such a fun name recognition for toddlers project.
Playdough Name Activity
We used foam letters for this name recognition for toddlers, but one can use any type of letters like magnetic ones or stamps. This playdoh name activity is a great way for toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergartnesr to learn to recognitze and spell their name, letter-by-letter. You will love that this name recognition activity requires no prep and is quick and easty to do!
Name recognition activity
There is much controversy around exposing your young child to upper case or lower case letters first. As a former preschool teacher, I have seen that children recognize upper case letters quicker because they see it in the beginning of the names of their class mates and make the connection phonetically.
For example, my daughter(5) will see a letter K, and tell me that is a K for Kaleb (beginning sound, phonetically spoken).
Children will soon enough be exposed to upper and lower case, so if you are unsure, perhaps go with whatever case your child is interested in first and stay with that case until a later age to avoid confusion.
Name learning activities
Now, for this activity you need playdough (we make our own microwave playdough) and letters of some sort:
Name recognition for toddlers
At first, I made the imprints of their names and let them trace it with their fingers. This is a great tactile experience too: feeling the grooves of the imprint while tracing it with your writing finger.
Preschool Name Activities
After that, they had to find the place for the letters, thus matching the letter imprint to the right foam letter. Leave the letters in the right order for younger kids, but mix up the letters for older children. This calls for visual discrimination skills. While doing this, one can stress each letter: sounding it out phonetically, so that the auditory and visual senses are making the connection.
Name Activities for Kindergarten
After this part, one could let them trace the name with a toothpick. Taking care where to start tracing, you could make a little hole first on the right spot as a starting point. After that, let them try and write their names with the toothpick by copying:
Name recognition preschool
Lastly, let your child print their names by themselves using the playdough and letters. This is the perfect opportunity to bring the concept of letters-in-a-row-make-a-word to life and work on spatial orientation too!
This name recognition activity with playdough imprints will be fun from toddler-aged to school-aged children. Extend this activity for school-aged children to practice sight words too!
Preschool Name Ideas
Looking for more Name Recognition Activities? Try these:
- Slime Preschool Name Ideas
- 28 Cute Name Crafts for Preschoolers
- Playdough Imprint Name Recognition Activities
- French Fry name crafts for preschoolers
- Cute I Spy Name Ornament for Kids
- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Name Recognition Activity
- Learn your name with straws Name Recognition Craft
- Name Recognition Pot of Gold Craft
- 30 Name Recognition Activities
Free Playdough Mats
Looking for more fun, free printable playdough mats? You will love these:
- Interactive Alphabet Playodugh Mats with finish the picture
- Simple Alphabet Playdough Mats with tracing lines
- Gumball Number Playdough Mats
- Fun Transportation Playdough mats (train, bus, rocket, airplane, boat, and more!)
- Free Shape Playdough Mats
- Preschool Shape Worksheets with playdoh
- Finish the scene Playdough Number Mats (featured above)
- Build a Playdough Birthday Cake Activity for Preschool
- Pet Animal Playdough mats (bird, turtle, fish, bunny, cat, lizzard, dog, snake, etc.)
- Free Printable Emotion Playdough mats
- Thanksgiving Playdough Mats featuring yummy thanksgiving favorite foods!
- Playdough Musical Activities for Kids
- Free Playdough Letter Mats
- Fall Playdough Mats (build a sunflower, leaf, acron, pumpkin, rake, hay, etc)
- Count to 10 Apple Playdough Mats
- FREE Ice Cream Pattern Printable
- Spider Math Activities for Preschoolers withPlay dogh
- Free Printable Human Body Playdough Mats
- Telling Time Activity with Playdough
- Grilling on a Ten Frame Summer Printable Playdough Mats
- Watermelon Seed Counting Playdough Mats
- Monster Shape Playdough Mats
- Uppercase Letter Tracing with playdough
- Birthday Cake Activity for Preschool Counting candles Playdough mats
- Sandcastle Activity Playdough Mat
- Over 100 Playdough Mats to print and play (plus more free printable playdough mats on our sister site)
Playdough Activities for Kids
Looking for some amazing playdough recipes to try? Check out these easy play doh recipes!