Teaching Your Toddler with Flashcards

Toddlers are at the peak of their learning capacity. Between the ages of 1 and 3, kids are absorbing information at an astounding rate and you can take advantage of this period of time to teach your toddler. Young children who are actually taught instead of left to their own devices tend to do far better in school and usually continue to learn at an accelerated rate.

I'm not saying you should force your 18 month old to sit in a chair and study for 6 hours a day, toddlers certainly don't learn the same way older children do and you need to compensate for that. Adjusting your teaching techniques to fit a small child isn't that difficult, you just need to keep in mind that their attention span is pretty short.

Flashcards can be used with great success, if you know what you are doing. Since toddlers get bored very easily, you will need to capture their attention and make learning a fun game instead of a daily chore.

First, choose flashcards that are bright and big. Small, postcard flashcards usually don't grab their attention for long. Look for cards or make your own, that are about the size a regular sheet of writing paper. You will want them to have high contrast and bright colors, and they also need to be extra durable. If you like, have the cards laminated before your little one gets to see them and starts putting them through their paces.

Doing flashcards shouldn't be a bad thing, so you will want to keep your teaching sessions short. Do several five minute sessions throughout the day to keep your toddler interested. You can switch up the subject each time, but don't try to cover more than one subject per session. For example, you might do numbers at one session and farm animals at another.

The idea is to have fun, so feel free to make up silly songs or actions to go with each card. If you are teaching numbers, you might have your toddler shout out the name and hold up the correct number of fingers, jump the correct number of times, or punch the air a certain number of times. For animals, have him make the sound after he says the animal name. For very young children, you might only get the animal sound or the action at first, but they are still learning.

Don't have distractions around. You might try sitting facing your toddler on the bed and holding the cards up about two feet from his face. Make sure that the TV and radio are off and choose a time when your child is calm and not likely to have a tantrum.

Teaching with flashcards is a great way to expand your toddler's knowledge base. He will learn new words and be able to identify things he has never even seen. Numbers and letters will be learned easily, well before he is even thinking about school.