What's In A Name?
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Children love playing games with their names and with the names of their friends, and they love putting their names in nonsense rhymes and their favorite poem or song whenever possible. Using rhymes and playing name games is a terrific way of letting children experiment with sounds as they develop phonemic awareness and other important literacy skills.
Here are some of my favorite rhymes for name games. You can use them during floor time, in pocket charts for group or independent work, as individual or class books, in poetry journals, and in many other ways that are limited only by your imagination.
A note on pocket chart activities:
I always have
a full set of the children's names displayed at the bottom of each pocket
chart that holds a name game or poem. I make several sets, with the
writing done in different colors for each set, so that cards are easy to
return to the proper place if they're dropped on the floor. For some
of the rhymes, you need multiple copies of each child's name in order to
fill in all the blanks. Be sure you also have important school names
on name cards -- teacher, principal, coach, librarian, secretary, custodian,
etc. The kids love it!
