Watercolor Name Recognition Activity

Name recognition is one of the most important skills a child gains from being in preschool. Learning to identify a name can be difficult for a preschooler, so I try to offer my preschoolers plenty of activities to help them out. Today, I’m sharing with you a basic water color name recognition activity.

Each week, I try to offer my preschoolers a new name recognition activity in addition to the usual stand-bys. I got the idea for water color names from Teach Preschool. Deborah used hot glue to write to children’s names on the paper, creating a textural element to each piece.

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Materials needed for water color names

• heavy duty paper (You can use real watercolor paper or premium cardstock is an ok substitute).
• permanent markers
• watercolors (My preschoolers loves these liquid watercolor paints, but these taditional watercolors work great, too).

The name recognition activity

I have to be honest, using hot glue like Teach Preschool didn’t work out for me. The paper warped too much and I have a terrible hand at pulling the hot glue gun trigger with the an equal amount of pressure to create decent looking names. So, after messing up several names, I opted for using just a permanent marker. I simply wrote each child’s name on a sheet of watercolor paper, taped it to the table and invited the children to paint their names.

The students quickly got to work painting their names.

Some of the children chose to trace their names with the watercolors while others just mixed the watercolors in a design of their own, covering the entire paper with bright and vivid colors. As the children worked, they pointed out the letters of their names and drew attention to letters in their own name that may have matched a letter in another student’s name.

The prep work to put together this activity took only a few minutes and the children loved how it was a mix of name recognition and art.