Name Activities for Toddlers

When introducing letters to your child, it can feel a bit overwhelming in terms of where to begin. Do we just start at the beginning? With letter ‘A’? Do we go in random order? Use a theme? Follow a special curriculum? Uppercase? Lowercase? Both? Yes. All would be great places to start and really, there’s no right or wrong way to do it. Any exposure to letters at an early age is going to benefit them in the long run. HOWEVER, in my humble, early childhood-teacher-minded opinion, I would say the best place to start is with the letters in your child’s name.

They are going to need to learn to recognize and likely spell their name as they attend preschool. By kindergarten, they will need to be able to print (write) their name, and by the end of kindergarten, they are going to be expected to write their name the proper way- using an uppercase letter only at the beginning of their name, with the rest of the letters being lowercase. They will need to become very familiar with these letters, both the uppercase and lowercase versions of them. PLUS, what toddler isn’t more interested in something when it has to do with THEM? It is THEIR name, it’s all about them. They can be proud and show ownership in knowing these letters because they are special to them. They help to make them who they are.

I started working on the letters in Kade’s name with him when he was almost two (around 23 months to be exact). I think age 2 is a great time to start introducing/talking about letters because their brains are so incredibly spongy at this age. I would not expect a 2-year-old to master the letters in their name, or any letters at all for that matter. I will throw a big, fat disclaimer out there and say that Kade didn’t actually start picking up on the letters until he was more like 2.5. It definitely took longer than I thought it would based on how quickly he had been picking up other skills. I will also say that there is absolutely no reason why you couldn’t wait until age 3 or almost even 4 to start working on these skills. You know your child best and you know what they are ready for and when. I tend to err on the “bored-stay-at-home-mom trying to keep her sanity and keep her child occupied side of the scale, hence our slightly earlier start.

There are SO many different fun and engaging ways to work on the letters in your child’s name. Some ways will work better than others, and some may be more fun for your child than others. I’m sharing a list of 12 different activities that I did with Kade when we first started working on the letters in his name. I hope that these activities inspire you, and are helpful in finding ways to make learning FUN for your little ones!

Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links which means that I would receive a small profit if you were to purchase through that link. Some of the profit made through these links will be put toward materials needed to provide activity ideas and resources on my blog for my readers and subscribers. All opinions are still my own and I only link to products that I actually, truly recommend.

1. Crayon Resist Art with Watercolors

Materials:
- card stock paper
- watercolor paints
- white crayon
- scotch tape
- cup of water

For this activity, simply write your child’s name on white paper with a white crayon. You’ll have to press down very hard, and possibly go over each line a few times as you write it. Then, let your child water color paint all over the paper and be amazed ;) as the letters in their name resist the paint and appear! Pro-tip: whenever doing any sort of art project (painting, coloring, etc.), always use a piece of tape at the top and bottom of the paper so that it doesn’t slide around as your child is working. You could probably do this with regular white paper, but I always try to use card stock for projects so that it doesn’t rip as easily and to give it a more sturdy feel.

2. Festive/Seasonal Letter Match

Materials:
- foam shapes to coordinate with the current season/upcoming holiday (Christmas/winter shapes, heart shapes, shamrocks, Easter eggs, flowers, patriotic stars, Fall shapes, turkeys
- black sharpie
- uppercase magnetic letters and/or lowercase magnetic letters

This is just a festive spin on a simple letter matching activity. I wrote each of the letters of Kade’s name on a shamrock and lined them out for him. I set out the matching magnetic letters and had him place the matching letter on the correct shamrock. As an added challenge, you could set out additional letters for your child to search through, or have them matching lowercase to uppercase.

3. Parking Garage Letters

Materials:
- cardboard box
- black sharpie
- scissors
- white label stickers
- small cars/trucks

This was such a fun one for my litte car/truck loving guy! I cut up some white labels and stuck them to four of our wooden Melissa & Doug cars. I wrote one letter of Kade’s name on each car. The trickiest part of this activity is obviously cutting apart/constructing the garage itself. It’s really not too complicated but it does take just a little extra time. I wrote his name out in the “garage” and drew lines to separate them and make them look like parking spots. He loved driving his cars into their corresponding spots. As mentioned in the previous activity, you could also do lowercase/uppercase matching for older kiddos. :)

4. Glitter Glue Letters

Materials:
- glitter glue
- card stock paper
- black sharpie

This activity, which incorporates pre-writing skills and fine motor skills, is slightly more advanced as it takes quite a bit of hand-eye coordination, and it’s really tough on tiny fingers. We definitely worked on this one together. I wrote Kade’s name out the proper way (first letter uppercase with the rest lowercase), and all uppercase so that he can see it and practice it both ways. We then worked TOGETHER (there is absolutely no way he could have done this on his own… it’s hard!) to squeeze the glitter glue out as we traced over the letters. We switched it up and used different colors for each time we traced. Even though he couldn’t quite do this independently yet, it was still a great, new way for him to visualize the letters in his name and get the feel for forming them on paper. He also thinks glitter glue is super cool so that helps. ;)

5. Glitter Glue Finger Trace

Materials:
- glitter glue
- sentence strips
- card stock paper

Another way I used glitter glue was by writing his name out on a sentence strip myself, letting it dry and then gluing it to a piece of card stock to keep it sturdy. I had Kade use his finger to trace over the letters in his name. When the glitter glue is dried, it is raised off the paper a little bit and has somewhat of a rough/bumpy texture to it.

6. Lego Letter Match

Materials:
- lego blocks
- or you could use these
- white label stickers
- black sharpie

For this activity, take one bigger block and use the stickers to write the letters of your child’s name. Then write each letter on its own individual block for them to match up/stack on top. If you don’t have a bigger block long enough for your child’s name, you could write it out on a strip of paper and they could still match and build each letter on top of that.

7. Pom Pom Letters

Materials:
- card stock paper
- Elmer’s glue
- pom poms

This one was so much fun! Not only were we focused in on each letter of his name, but squeezing the glue bottle and placing each pom pom into the glue was also great for building fine motor skills. I had Kade help me squeeze the glue bottle to form each letter of his name, and then I let him have at the pom poms telling him he had to cover up all the glue. He had so much fun picking out the different colored poms and forming each letter.

8. Post-It Letter Match

Materials:
- chart paper or
- easel paper
- post-it notes
- black marker

For this activity, I tore off a decent sized piece of paper from our easel paper roll, and used a black marker to write the letters of Kade’s name (all uppercase) scattered around. I then wrote the letters out on post-it notes and Kade had to take one at a time and stick it to the matching letter. Similar to many of these activities, this one would be great for uppercase/lowercase matching, and could also be used to practice other skills such as number recognition, matching numbers to the correct amount (by drawing dots or other shapes onto the post-its), matching shapes, or sight words for older kiddos.

If you have a very active little one, you could make this even more engaging by hiding the post-it notes around the room for them to find before matching/sticking them on to the chart paper.

9. Pretend Play - Cookie Letters

Materials:
- cookie sheet
- rolling pin
- spatula (our is from this set but you could always use a regular sized one that you have in your kitchen, too!)
- foam bath letters
- small paper plates
- black marker
- “The Duckling Gets a Cookie?!” by Mo Willems

First of all, if you haven’t heard of Mo Willems and his books, you need to. The pigeon books are my favorite but his elephant and piggie books are great too. So fun for kids and they almost always have me laughing too! I listed the materials that we used for this activity but they aren’t all completely necessary and you could definitely adapt this to use what you have.

We love doing activities that go along with different books to help the book come to life. This is a great way to grow your child’s love for and interest in reading, too! To prep this activity, I wrote the letters of Kade’s name each on a small white paper plate. I set out the cookie sheet, the rolling pin, the spatula, and the foam bath letters on the cookie sheet. Kade used the rolling pin to roll out each letter “cookie” and then I had him use the spatula to transfer them to the correct plate. We had fun pretending we were baking and then serving and “eating” the cookies together.

10. Road Letters

Materials:
- small cars/trucks
- free printable road letters
- laminator
- laminating sheets
- plastic sheet covers

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Print out the road letters in your kiddos’ name and either laminate them or place them each in a plastic sheet cover. Give them some little cars or trucks and away they go! Don’t focus too much on where to start and the correct way to form each letter at this point. Just make sure you talk about each letter as they drive around on it and let them familiarize themselves with each one however they want. :)

11. Sensory Bin Letter Hunt

Materials:
- uppercase magnetic letters and/or lowercase magnetic letters
- clear plastic storage tub (or any other small bin/tub you have lying around the house)
- paper
- pen/marker/sharpie
- plastic sheet cover
- sensory material (dried beans, coffee beans, rice, uncooked pasta, uncooked lentils, corn kernels, etc.)

So for this one, I pulled out the letters of Kade’s name from our stash of magnetic letters and threw them in a bin with some dried black beans. I wrote the letters across the top of a piece of paper and made columns so that he had a place to sort them out as he found them in the bin. You can add spoons, or scoops for added sensory play fun but definitely not necessary. Send them on a hunt for the letters in their name and have them sort the letters into the correct category. You can choose to add other letters to the bin as an added challenge, or even throw in some lowercase letters as well!

Do this one around Halloween and add a festive spin: “Feed the Monster” - DIY yourself a little tissue box monster… we have been pulling this guy out around Halloween for the last 2-3 years now! Added some fake spideys in our sensory bin for extra fun too. ;)

12. Sticker Letter Match

Materials:
- free printable block letters
- laminator
- laminating sheets
- sharpie
- dot stickers

I have an entire blog post on this activity! So I won’t bore you here. But basically, print out the block letters in your kiddo’s name, invest in a laminator if you don’t already have one (seriously one of the best investments I ever made) and laminate them. Then write the letters of your kiddo’s name on a bunch of dot stickers and have them place the stickers on the correct letter. You can switch up lowercase/uppercase matching for an added challenge. In the blog post I also include several other ways that you can use these block letters for letter practice and/or learning the letters of their name. SO many more activities you can do with these so make sure you check it out!

I hope that these activities help to guide you in teaching your child some of the most important letters they will learn, and in having fun while doing so! As always, please never hesitate to comment with any questions you may have. :) If you liked this post or found it helpful, pin this image to your Pinterest so you can save and come back to it later, and/or share it with your friends!

Be sure to check out these similar posts:
Activity Ideas for 12-18 Month Olds
30+ Activity Ideas for 1-2 Year Old Toddlers