My 3 (almost 4) year-old is really into letters at the moment. 

He's asking questions about them, pointing them out, recognising/naming them, making them and just generally showing that now is the time to follow his interest and provide him with opportunities to practice and learn more about letters and his name.

I don't have time for fancy set-ups or anything that takes a long time to prepare these days (3 year-olds really keep you busy!) and it's almost always the simple activities that are most enjoyed and get the most use. 

This wax-resist activity is a classic that doesn't go out of style. You only need a candle, paper and some watercolour paint to have fun practicing name recognition, letter learning, number learning and just having fun.

Ages: 2+

See the bottom for handy tips to simplify or extend to suit your child's age & level of development.

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My baby is now 3 years old and this year is attending a 3 year-old preschool group, twice a week for 2.5 hour sessions (total of 5 hours per week). He is just loving the socialisation, play-based curriculum and the fact that it's practically like being at home, but instead of one activity at a time, he can race around from activity to activity doing whatever tickles his fancy at the time. 

It's no surprise that in a 2.5 hour session he finds the time to do rice play, painting, playdough, water-play, building, sand play, reading, pretend-play, cutting & pasting and a whole lot more!

One of the things that is important for him now that he is playing and learning independently outside of the house, is being able to recognise his own name. Each child at preschool has their own locker to put their bag and each has their name on it. As most children this age are pre-literate, they also include a photo of each child next to their name so that they can make the connection between their own face and the combination of letters that makes up their name. He also has things like drink bottles and hats that are now labeled with his name, so there is a lot of chance for exposure and it's something that he needs to be able to recognise.

Learning to recognise, read and write your own name is predominantly a matter of being exposed to it and having experiences with it, a number of times. Children are all different when it comes to how quickly they are able to learn something. Some children are able to have very few experiences with their name before they are able to recognise it for the word that it is, and some children will need to be exposed to it hundreds of times before they are able to have consolidated the learning. Most children sit somewhere in the middle of a bell curve graph of learning abilities and will pick up some things quicker or slower than others. We're all individuals.

So, in order to learn our name, we need to be exposed to it and have experiences with it. There are tons and tons of different ways that you can get children writing, reading and playing with their name. Here is one simple activity.

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To help my daughter (aged 4) practice writing her name, I thought I'd give her a fun sensory experience to entice her to want to learn. It was a huge success and one of the few activities she has pleaded with me on more than one occasion, to repeat. As a result, I changed the experience slightly each time so now we can share with you, 3 different ways that you could make your "Chocolate" Name!

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Play dough is a wonderful sensory experience for children and one that most will thoroughly enjoy.

Today we're combining a couple of our favourite tactile materials 

with an easy way to practice Name Recognition, Letters and Spelling. 

This activity is also great for promoting fine motor skills and can also be used to focus

on colours and patterns.

Ages: 2-6+

(Maddie is currently 3.5. See the Handy Tips at the bottom of the post to either Simplify or Extend this activity)

Materials: Playdough, Pompoms, Rolling Pin and Pencil

Roll out the playdough and using the pencil, write in your child's name

Start covering the lines with pompoms to show your child what to do. We used mini pompoms here.

Children place the pompoms to cover the lines to spell out their name using their pincer grip. 

Add tweezers for an added challenge.

Pom-pom name. Discuss the letters and order. 

Use to practice single letters

Using larger pompoms

Handy Tips:

- To simplify this activity, start with single letters, such as the first letter of your child's name. Using larger pompoms will be easier for less advanced fine motor skills as they are easier to grab. When teaching single letters try to start with letters that have meaning to them (like the first letter of their name) and letters that generally have only 1 sound (eg S, M, F etc)

- To extend this activity, have your child do the writing in the play dough with the pencil. You could always do a very faint outline and have your child trace over the top to make the lines themselves if they're not confident at letter formation

- To begin again, simply scrunch the dough back into a ball and re-roll out.

- Use this same idea for teaching sight words or numbers

- Mix it up by providing different materials to cover the lines with such as beans or beads etc.

- Include further areas of learning by talking about and focusing on covering each letter with a particular colour or by encouraging simple patterns.

Want more ideas for Learning Letters?

Try our most popular and comprehensive post ever on the subject: The A-Z of Learning Letters. 90+ Activities

or, try making some fun Alphabet Goo!

How about some different fun Learning with Playdough?

Our Playdough Imprints. Texture and Pattern Exploration activity was really fun

or, how about this fun Invitation to Play with playdough and some other materials?

Happy playing,
Debs :)

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