Spell Your Name in Russian
I love coming up with activities that will be multifaceted and fun for my 3 year-old. This week we were focusing on our names. So the final activity of the week was also related to our names: Анна and Саша. In addition to working on our letters and spelling we touched on counting, animal names and sounds, colors, crafting tools (glue, scissors, etc.) and worked on our fine motor skills.
We had so much fun doing it that we decided share it with you:
WHAT WE USED:
(you probably have most of it at home)
1) Copies of the Letters That Make Up Your Name (we just copied the pages out of AZBUKA: Coloring the Russian Alphabet)
2) Stickers
3) Dot Markers
4) Foam Sheets
5) Glue Stick
7) Scissors (usual ones or edging ones)
WHAT WE DID:
1) Chose and Copied the Letters
I wrote down our names and had her first name all the letters, then read the syllables, then read the names. Then I asked her to count how many of each letters we needed to copy (Ax4, Сx1, Шx1, Нx2). We went together to the printer/copier and I opened Azbuka and asked her to find the letters. When she found the page I put it on the scanner and we together chose the number of copies on the digital screen. We did it for all the letters.
2) Spelled the Names
I gave all the copies of the letters to her and asked her to find all the letters that she needed for her name and then put them in the correct order to spell her name. Then I asked her to do the same for my name. She read the names in syllables and then as a whole. We played around with what other words she can make out of those letters (ананас, наш were the two she came up with).
3) Did the Crafts: dot markers, stickers, foam paper, stamps.
- We chose one letter from each of our names and colored them with the dot markers.
- The next letter we used stickers on (I had several smaller sized ones that will fit inside the letter).
- Then I cut out the pieces that would make letters Ш and Н. She used the glue stick inside the lines of each letter and then put the correct pieces of the letter into place for both of them.
- I have small wooden animal stamps (Melissa and Doug), some foam stamps and several ink pads for them. We used them to put the stamps within the lines of the letter. We reviewed the animal names and sounds for each animal stamp we used (and used Animal Names and Sounds book for the tiger to go over the whole tiger family – that was the only animal that matched the book from the set of stamps we had).
4) Cut the Letters
I drew pencil lines around the size of the actual page of the Azbuka book. We used edging scissors to cut out to size. I had to help her with the long size and some of the letters turned out quite lopsided but she did all 4!
5) Spelled the Name Again
Now we used out cut out and decorated letters to spell and read the names again.
ADVICE:
The whole activity took us 30 minutes. The cutting out was at the end and was the hardest activity for her (especially with those kind of scissors) so she started to get a little frustrated and I had to help her, but she was really into everything else!
My advice is to see what are your child’s favorite craft activities and incorporate them (we will be doing her sister’s and her dad’s names next week and I will incorporate bending and gluing pipe-cleaners, gluing cotton balls and buttons, using Play-Doh to fill in the letters, punching out wholes and painting). I come up with most of the activities from Pinterest and other blogs I frequent (check out Amanda’s post).
Keep in mind that some kids will do better if you separate this into 15 minute activities or even one letter a day (especially for long names) and the more the child likes the activity the more likely they will actually remember the letters.
Learn Russian and have fun!
What a cool activity! I wish I could write in Russian!
Thank you Marta,
You can do it with every language and why not learn some Russian too? In addition to Russian and English we are also learning Spanish here and have lots of fun. Just made maracas out of the paper plate and pasta yesterday.
Anna
[…] Spell Your Name in Russian […]