A unique way to explore name recognition in preschool

One of the first things I like to have the children get into the habit of doing when they enter the classroom is to find their name. In our PreK class, Miss. Cobb came up with this fun idea of creating stick puppets for our daily attendance board…

The How-To

To make the puppets, the children were invited to decorate a craft stick person any way they wished. Miss. Lauren set out glue and a variety of collage and art materials for the children to choose from. On the handle of each stick puppet was the child’s name…

The children found the puppet with their name printed on it and went to work designing their puppet anyway they wished. After drying, we noticed some of the pieces needed a little reinforcement so they wouldn’t fall off of their puppets while in use. We made sure that there was enough glue to hold the pieces in place without changing anything the children had created…

Promoting Name Recognition

Each morning, the stick puppets are set out on our shelf waiting for the children to see them as they enter the classroom.  The children put their back packs away then come back to the shelf to find their own puppet…

And then put their puppet in their name pocket on our board so everyone will know who has come to preschool that day. You will notice a little helper stick is in the photo below as well. Each day the helper is moved to the next pocket and that will be our helper of the day….

Why we Love the Stick Puppets

The children have quickly become familiar with this daily morning routine. It is a simple way to help them notice and recognize their name on the board and we can build on the process by talking about who is missing or how many children are present during our morning circletime…

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