This is a follow up post to “One Love“, as we have made our B is for Bob inspired t-shirts. Using Adobe Photoshop, I created the images to be printed on the shirts; however, any word processing program could be used. In the previous post, I mentioned the print needed to be flipped for it to appear correctly on the shirt. This step is not necessary for the HP iron-on paper, but it is neccessary for some brands of iron transfer paper. The HP paper allows you to iron the image on without flipping it. After the image is pasted/inserted into a document and sized, the text is added. Next, using your ink jet printer, print the image. Follow the directions in the package of iron paper to peel away the backing, use a thin piece of tissue paper transfer paper on top, and then iron the image onto the shirt. Voila, you have your own custom made t-shirt! The children and parents of my preschool were so excited for their personal name shirts. These shirts are great for teaching name recognition, phonemic awareness, and letter recognition. Research supports the use of a child’s name to introduce them to alphabetic principles. A child is motivated to learn the letters and the sounds of their name, as well as the names of their friends and families. Using a child’s name to teach these skills is an authentic task, rather than the arbitrary letter of the week task of my own early childhood education.