Once children can recognise their name, we can begin to teach them how to spell it.
Draw a car park on a piece of cardboard or paper. Write their name making sure there is one letter in each car parking space. Make sure to use a capital letter to start and lowercase for the remaining letters.
Then write the letters of their name on the top of some toy cars. I used a chalk pen which rubbed off when we had finished. Alternatively, you could write the letters on masking tape and stick them to the toy cars.
Start by seeing if they can park any of the cars in the correct parking space. It doesn’t matter what order they park the cars. At first, we want to get them to look closely at the letters in their name.
As they park the cars, talk about the shape of the letters, their name and their sounds. Oh you found the i. It has a line and a dot. It is called i and it normally makes and i sound. In your name it makes and ee sound. Look at the j. It looks almost the same but it looks like it has a monkey tail.
Once they have parked them, you could pretend to drive/reverse the cars out of their spaces so they remain in the correct order. This time park the initial letter first and get them to work their way along from left to right. This is important because they will need to write the letters in order when they begin to write their name.
Once they have parked the cars, drive or reverse the cars to different places so they are mixed up. This time see if they can park the cars in the correct order to spell their name.
Extension - On the other side of the cardboard draw the same number of car parking spaces but don’t write any letters in them. Mix the cars up and see if they can park them in order to spell their name.
