Flash cards have been used for long as a teaching aid for kids. They work on the principle of mental association and help in memorizing basic concepts and ideas. And this can form a strong foundation for kids as well as enhance their confidence when they are introduced to more formal learning methodologies.
There is really no minimum age for starting to use flash cards with kids. You can start as early as you want, even when your baby is just a few months old. At this stage, you need to make flash cards that are large and colorful and which will make an impression on the child's senses. Just go for a large orange circle or a humongous triangle filled in with red in your flash card and you will see changes in the way junior reacts to each of them.
As your child grows, you can move towards picture flash cards containing pictures of objects that he encounters around him such as modes of transport, fruits, vegetables etc. The way to work with picture flash cards is to flash them in front of the child for a few seconds along with vocalizing clearly the picture on the card. This will help him make the association that an 'apple', for instance, looks like this picture. And this what you want to achieve, right?
In the next stage come the 'word' flash cards and math and science flash cards. Make word flash cards to help your child understand sight words that cannot be broken phonetically like friend, aunt etc. You can also include words like days of the week or months of the year in this category.
Flash cards can help significantly with school work in areas of math and science. For making simple math flash cards, all you need to do is write the problem on one side of the card (say 1+1), on the reverse side, you write the problem with its solution (say 1+1=2). When you alternatively show both sides of the flash card, the mind immediately makes the association that 1+1=2. You can make science flash cards using the same principle, having cause on one side and effect on the other side. To give a simple example, if you are teaching your child about sense organs, have a picture of the ear on one side and maybe a few musical notes on the other side, helping him make the association that ears help us hear.
Just as there is no minimum age for starting to use flash cards, there is no age when you need to stop them. Flash cards can help your child throughout his life. As he grows older, you can make flash cards of important mathematical or scientific formulae, to get them entrenched in the mind. It becomes easier then to apply the formulae for problem solving as required. Of course, I assume at this stage, your young man will make the flash card himself, but the credit is all yours for introducing him to such a wonderful method of learning.
Author Resource:
Ara Hovsepian is firm believer in the virtue of flash cards and has used and continues to use flash cards with his two young daughters in various academic and non academic subject areas. For more information on how to make flashcards and in particular, if you want to know more about making science and math flash cards , visit http://blog.holdthatword.com/.
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