Name games!

Happy Monday friends!!

Guess who found out we're getting another teacher today?!!?

THIS GAL!!

woot woot!

I mean, I really do love my 25 little munchkins...buuuut, this is going to make life a whole lot easier! 

*Hopefully* this time next week I will be down to 20!

This is the first time I've posted actual "school" stuff since we started back- it's just been a little nuts-o around here! So I'm glad to be back and sharing a few things with you that we've been working on!

As I posted last weekend, we are working *really* hard on learning each other's names, their beginning letters, and just getting to know one another!

Something I really like to do is make name sticks for all my kids! I have kids all over the spectrum, so it is very important to use their pictures with their names for quite some time. I forget every year how much they truly do grow over the year!

We play name games with these sticks: I either lay them out in the middle of our circle and they go choose a girl if they are a boy or vice versa and have to say the person's name and hand it to them. Everyone ends up with their sticks as the end and maybe they learned one more person's name!

As we play this, I change it up daily- they might have to ask the person their favorite color or favorite food, etc.

They *love* looking at these sticks!

After we have become familiar with each other, I add them into a center and we begin by sorting by beginning letter (I write it in red on the stick). As we go further, we may sort by syllables or certain letters in their names! The fun is endless! :)

{to make this I got some library pockets in two colors - one for vowels, the other for consonants, adhered them to a poster board and stuck on letters. These are punched out letters we have at our materials production, but I'm sure you could use letter stickers and that would be easier! Then I run the whole thing through the laminator and cut out the top of the pocket with an Exacto knife.}

If you are not a facebook fan yet, I have a little preview of the Halloween unit I'm almost finished with as a freebie for my fans only! Click on the "fans only freebie" tab on the top right of my page to snag it up!

What name games do you play in your classrooms?!