My Montessori Journey: The Name Clothesline

Wow! It's finally here. The first day of school with students is tomorrow. I am very excited and hope it goes well. Today I was up at school for about 2 hours doing a few last minute things. One thing I really wanted to have ready but hadn't done yet is the Name Clothesline. I don't remember where I got this idea, but I'm modifying it a little from what it had been used for in the classroom on the blog I don't remember.

Each day a different student will bring snack and be our "snack helper." As I've mentioned before, the snack helper will have various leadership opportunities which include leading the pledge, leading the line out to recess and back, passing out snack, etc. I would also like to use the snack helper's name each day to give everyone a little exposure to the names of the letters of our alphabet. So........I found these little t-shirt cut-outs at a teacher supply store and rigged up a clothesline on the back of a shelf. I used screw-in eye hooks and some of the wire I used for my art wire as shown in this post. I first tried it with yarn between the hooks, but the t-shirts were so heavy they really pulled the yarn down.

My plan is to show the snack helper's name card during our line time. Together we will spell the snack helper's name out loud, clapping as we say each letter, then saying the name as we raise both arms like a cheer. Tomorrow, my snack helper will be GRANT. So we will chant and say, "G-R-A-N-T........Grant!" I will then lay out the t-shirt letters and we will count the letters in Grant's name. Then Grant and I will hang up his letters on the line. For tomorrow, we will just leave the letters up all morning. However, in the future I will set this up as an activity the children can do independently during their work time. For example, after we have spelled and hung up the snack helper's name, any child could go over and spell their name or a friend's name during work time. I plan to take everyone's picture this first week, then I'll make control cards with their photo and first name so they can have something to look at and check.

NOTE: I may need to buy more t-shirts to have enough letters. I bought a package which had 36. But, I need 16 for capital letters (I counted today and out of my 59 students, there are 16 different "first letters") and I still need to figure out what other lowercase letters I'll need. My plan is to just make new letters each day as needed to spell the snack helper's name, utilizing the ones I've already made too, of course. Does that make sense? I am hoping the task won't be too overwhelming for the children with too many letters to go through. Now, as I'm writing this, I am thinking I should have made the capital letters all the same color. The t-shirts came in 4 different colors. Well, we'll see how it works. I'll keep you posted here on the blog. I do think they will enjoy hanging up their name as a work.

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A T-shirt typically extends to the waist. Variants of the T-shirt, like the tank top, A-shirt (with the nickname "wife beater"), muscle shirt, scoop neck, and the V-neck have been developed. Hip hop fashion calls for "tall-T" T-shirts which may extend down to the knees. A 1990s trend in women's clothing involved tight-fitting "cropped" T-shirts that are short enough to reveal the midriff. Another popular trend is wearing a "long-sleeved T-shirt", then putting a short-sleeved T-shirt of a different color over the long-sleeved shirt; this is known as "layering".

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