Making a name label with your child

This is a quick activity you can do together. Making the sign will support your child's creativity, and develop their fine motor skills, as well as giving you the opportunity to talk with them about their name, and show them how it looks written down.

The finished sign will support your child to begin to recognise their name, and the importance of the letters within it.

Use a piece of card for your child to make their door sign on (cut up a cereal box if you don't have any plain card). Sit down together and write your child’s name for them in big letters (remember to only use a capital letter for the first letter).
Encourage your child to decorate the sign. Bright coloured pens, paint, stickers, glitter or paper cut-outs will all look great. They could add a drawing of something they like too.
Alternatively, for younger children, you could encourage them to decorate a large piece of paper with pens or paint, they can just use their hands and fingers. Then write their name in large letters over the top, or cut out the letters and stick them onto card.

While you do this together, you can talk to your child about their name.

See what they can already tell you about their name, and then tell them something new.

“Shall we count how many letters there are?”

“Can you remember which sound the first letter makes?”

When the sign is finished, you can stick or hang it on your child's bedroom door.

Top tips!

Whatever materials your child chooses to use to decorate the sign will be developing their fine motor skills and building their confidence in making marks and drawing.
Give them lots of praise for their work, even if it doesn't look quite how you'd imagined! They will be proud when you hang it on their door.
If they've enjoyed the activity you could make another name label to use as a place mat for the dinner table, to label their toy box, a coat hook, or maybe for the cover of a book all about them.