What's in a (Webkinz) name?

Since 2007, I have been using Webkinz as a part of my media literacy program. Even though I incorporate this stuffed toy and online equivalent every year, it's never quite the same. One thing we usually do each year is purchase a new Webkinz toy and we learn about collaborative decision making through choosing a name for the toy, using the 3-part process as outlined in the Tribes TLC training. In 2011, our focus was more on voting. This year, based on experience from past years, I wanted us to look more deliberately at naming. In the past, the students chose names that, in my opinion, weren't particularly good. Maybe, I theorized, the reason for these "non-name" names was that the students had never been given the opportunity to create a name for something. I was also keenly aware that I didn't want to put my own ethno-cultural biases on what a "good" name was. After all, around this time in the news, an airline was doing social media damage control because one of their employees made fun of a young passenger whose name was Abcde. (Although, to be honest, this news story led to a lot of informal discussion in the staff room about reasonable and ridiculous names for children.)

Our inquiry unit for this term with the kindergarteners focused on belonging. There was a deliberate social intent - the hope was for the students to be more welcoming of others in their play time. We read many books that dealt with characters who did not feel like they belonged and how this was resolved. (We read Noisy Nora, Can I Play Too?  [an Elephant and Piggie book], Small Saul, Spork  and Where Oliver Fits.)

Although we did not belabor this point, when it came to working on a name for our various Webkinz (Room K1 has a chicken, Room K2 has a lion fish, and Room 110 has a reindeer), we talked about how giving a name to something or someone shows both how they belong to a group (or family) and also how they are unique or special. We made a conscientious effort to encourage creative naming, i.e. we don't name a girl "Girl" or a dog "Dog", so try to think of something that would be a way of identifying that one Webkinz.

I am relieved and happy to share that we've had our brainstorming, narrowing down of options, and final vote - and the names are actual names!

K1's chicken is called Macdonald.

K2's lion fish is called Unicorn.

Room 110's reindeer is called Santa.

This coming week, we'll use the codes that come with the new toys to "register" them online with their new names. We'll continue to look at tags (which the students have learned indicate who made the toy or piece of clothing), logos (the rainbow W for Webkinz is a significant one and we'll branch out to look at other examples) and ads.