Teach students about poetry and learn a few fun facts about them when you help them practice their names with an acrostic poem. Create an example using your own name to show kindergartners how an acrostic works, and then have students write the letters of their name vertically on the left side of a piece of paper. Students will write their name at the top of the paper followed by the word "is" to start the acrostic sentence. Help kindergartners choose a word or phrase corresponding to each letter of their name to describe themselves to complete the acrostic poem. For example, a child named Ann's acrostic may look like this:
Ann is
Always happy
Nice
Neat.
Combine treat time and learning time when you and your students cut out letter shapes from sugar cookie dough. Bake the cookies and then ask students to assemble their names from the cookie letters. Arrange the letters on a plate to send home and share with their families. If you are not allowed to serve sweets from school, make the letters out of salt dough or Play-Doh instead.
When kindergartners recognize all their letters and are starting to write, help them learn correct letter formation by printing their names in highlighter marker onto a sheet of paper. Kindergartners can use crayon or pencil to trace over the letters as their muscles learn the correct way to form each shape. Use dotted lines as an alternative to highlighter marker and place a larger dot to mark the starting point of each letter.
Make one kindergartner the star each day as you learn the letters of everyone's names. After helping the teacher point to letters during an alphabet chant, invite a kindergartner to point out the letters for his own name for the class to repeat. For example, a child named Eve would say, "Give me an E" and the class would repeat "E" as the teacher writes the letter onto a strip of paper, continuing for the "v" and "e." Cut the strip into pieces with one letter on each piece and mix them up for the kindergartner to rearrange into the correct order.
Get students familiar with the letters in their names by creating a class name book. Write one set of upper- and lower-case letters on each page and ask students to write their names onto every letter page that is in his name, highlighting the letter with a special color. Alice would have her name written on the Aa page with the "A" highlighted, the Ll page with the "l" highlighted, continuing for the rest of the letters in her name. Students get practice writing their names multiple times and will enjoy seeing who shares letters in their names.