Clothespin Name Making

We have been working on name recognition with the Pea. She does really well with it so I decided to introduce an activity where the Pea can make her name, and begin to identify what letters make her name. I decided to use clothespins for this, although you could easily do plain old letter tiles, magnetic letters, anything! I also decided to use felt hearts glued on to the clothespins for a couple of reasons: 1) to incorporate a fine motor skill - pinching the clothespin to open it 2) the colors provide a sort of pattern - this may aid her in remembering what order the letters are in. You could do a simple a-b-a-b pattern rather than the one I chose 3) we had the hearts from Valentine's Day!

Here are the clothespins with letters.

I told the Pea that we were going to make her name. I set down each clothespin and asked her to tell me each letter. This was done in a random order. I told her that her name begins with C and asked her to find C. She found the C clothespin right away. I asked her to clip it onto the plate. That's when I realized that she doesn't know how to use the clothespin! I showed her hown to pinch the ends to make it open. She tried and tried but couldn't get it on her own. So, we resumed the name-building and I put them on for her. After we made her name, I repeated "C-L-A-I-R-E says Claire". She really liked this activity and we did it about 5 more times. She still couldn't get the hang of working the clothespins, but by the fifth time of the activity she was starting to be able to say which letters came next to make her name! Which was the whole point! :) You could also write the letters of your child's name on the paper plate and have him match the clothespin letters to the letters on the plate. This may give him a sense of independence and would be a great matching activity.