Fun with Flashcards

For Christmas this year I got my son a pack of pre-k flashcards. Now I knew a lot of it would be advanced for him since he was just shy of two-years-old but he’d grow into them in my opinion, it’s never too early to start learning! The cards came in four categories: first words, shapes and colors, alphabet, and numbers.

The first words flashcards we use mostly like you would expect. I show him the card and he says what it is. If he doesn’t know it or doesn’t get it correct we keep it in the pack. Once he starts to correctly identify a card by saying the correct word we tape it up on his wall. This way he sees his accomplishments and gets excited whenever we get a new one! He has a little “reading” corner in his room so all the cards go above his chair in that corner.

For the shapes, I wanted to make something for identifying them. I wasn’t expecting him to learn to say hexagon, but I knew that he would be able to learn to point at the hexagon when I said it. Using this idea I took a piece of poster board and taped all the cards onto it.

With the numbers flashcards, I picked out one of each number one through twelve. I tried to pick ones with different pictures on them so that the number one and the number six didn’t both have cats on them. Then I taped them up in order on the opposite side of the same poster board I put the shapes.

The color flashcards I used in a fun sorting activity. My son liked to just label the picture on these cards and wasn’t really paying close attention to the colors. So I made a little game for him. He puts the flashcards down to match the color on this cute DIY Toddler Color Board I made him. It has another fun color game on the other side. You can read about how I made mine here.

Then, I flipped the board over and did the same thing with the alphabet. I used tape for all of these since I wanted to be able to change the location of the cards so he doesn’t simply memorize the locations. Once he is getting them correct in their current locations we’ll switch things up and do it all over again!

With everything in place, I can just hold up the board and tell him to point at the *blank*. We make a fun game out of it full of lots of cheering and clapping!

I find these to be quick and easy ways to help teach my son these basic skills that he will need later on once he starts school. What fun games and activities do you use to teach basic skills? There are so many out there I’m always looking for new methods!