LEARN WORDS WITH FLASH CARD PROJECT

I MYSELF MADE 800 FLASH CARDS BEFORE STARTING A LITERACY PROJECT IN UGANDA. IT WAS AT AN ORPHANAGE AND ALSO THE ILLITERATE POPULATION ALSO LEARNED THOSE WORDS. ONE OF MY EDUCATED VOLUNTEERS THERE ALSO TOLD ME HE LEARNED WORDS FROM THOSE CARDS TOO AND HE THEN ADDED 100 MORE CARDS OF THINGS IN THEIR ENVIRONMENT THAT IN NORTH AMERICA WE DON’T HAVE (AS THEY LIVE IN AN AFRICAN VILLAGE).

DIFFERENT WAYS TO MAKE FLASH CARDS ARE BY DRAWING ON PAPER OR USING A COMPUTER OR CUTTING OUT IMAGES FROM MAGAZINES AND GLUING THE CUT UP PICTURES ONTO PAPER OR CARD STOCK. (File folders are made of card stock so if you have a bunch of old file folders, cut them up and glue images onto the cards!!)

To make your own flash cards you can do it on a computer and buy card stock paper (or just paper if you can’t afford card stock.) or you can draw pictures with crayons and pencil crayons or even paint onto paper or old file folders or even a cut up box. Do not be stopped by lack of anything. You could use a napkin and a pencil….be creative!!

HERE IS HOW FLASH CARDS HELP TO CREATE THE BEGINNINGS OF LITERACY:

Using flash cards we show a picture of a chair and it then has the word C H A I R written in large black letters on a big card. You show the child the picture and the word and then say “CHAIR” very clearly and have them repeat it back to you. Then you show them each card you have one after the other and say the words as you show the card with the picture….BOAT, SHOE, PANTS, SHIRT, DOOR, HOUSE, BIRD, DOG, CAT, CHAIR, TREE, CAR, BICYCLE……hundreds of them!!! Do all of the cards over and over every day until they are fully understood. You can do it with large groups of kids as long as everyone is able to see the pictures and the word.

Then lets say you have 500 of these cards or 800 cards, then every day you FLASH THE CARDS ONE AFTER THE OTHER to the child or children or adults and have them repeat back each one.

I even made flash cards with a box of crayons and my friends grandson then colored each one.

Pretty soon your child knows fully those 500 words or 800 words AS NOUNS.

You could then make a bunch with action words, VERBS. Show for example someone running and the word in big letters says RUN. (I cut pictures out of magazines one time!!) Then say it and have them repeat it back to you. Then tell them to run!! Fully understood!! They saw the picture, they saw the word, they heard the word, they said the word AND THEY THEN DID THE ACTION.

You can do alot of words they CAN DO, like WALK, SIT, JUMP, HOP, LIE, CRY, SCREAM, LISTEN, TALK, CLEAN…make it super fun.

ALSO I found pictures of action words that also cannot be easily done by them but the picture shows the action such as FLY, SKI, COOK, SKATE.

Now notice skate is a noun AND ALSO it is an action word which is a verb so you could make two flash cards and one picture could show a picture of one skate, another picture can show people skating. So you say SKATE and they repeat for each of those cards.

So many nouns can be verbs and also adjectives and also adverbs. For example the word HOUSE can be a noun, a verb and an adjective and also an adverb.

Here is an example of that word HOUSE used as all four: 1. I LIVE IN A HOUSE.(noun) 2. CAN YOU HOUSE THESE PEOPLE WHEN THEY COME TO TOWN.(verb) 3. THIS IS A HOUSE MAT.(adjective) 4. WE WANT TO DO A HOUSE PROJECT TODAY.

Just start off with cards that have nouns and verbs.

Once I made cards to show the words DIRTY and also CLEAN being an adjective as kids often get so dirty so I thought it was a fun one to do with flash cards. This I did on the computer by google searching cartoon images of these words: “DIRTY DOG”, “DIRTY FEET”, “DIRTY BOY”, “DIRTY GIRL”, “DIRTY HANDS”, ‘DIRTY FACE” and then I had other cards that showed these things in photos that were not dirty: DOG, FEET, GIRL, BOY, HANDS. Pretty soon they realize what dirty is. Then tell them to go make their hands dirty. Now tell them to make their face dirty. Now tell them to make their feet dirty. FUN LEARNING.

You can also show a card that shows only one foot “FOOT”, one hand “HAND”. You have other cards that show a picture of 2 feet and it says “FEET” and another shows 2 hands and it says “HANDS”. Then say ‘Show me one foot” then see what they do, then say “Show me your feet” and see what they do.

Do this on a gradient of ONLY doing nouns first until they fully know those, then ONLY do verbs. Now do both the nouns and verbs. After you really can see they know these well, then add some adjective and adverb pictures. You could do this for many many weeks until you are ready to do a proper literacy program. (see my post on “Ollie the Elephant Literacy Program’ which I think is the best literacy program in the world!!

I am telling you this flash card way of learning BEFORE I tell you about the whole Ollie program so you can START TODAY and you can do this for a long time every day.

DO NOT WAIT TO GET STARTED TEACHING LITERACY. MAKE FLASH CARDS AND DRILL THEM OVER AND OVER AND OVER!!!!

You can start with a box of crayons and make the cards yourself or if you don’t have cards and crayons start with a pencil and paper. Don’t let anything stop you. You can cut picture out of magazines and glue them on paper and then write the word with a thick felt pen or crayon.

I have made them out of crayons but also I had fun making cards on the computer by google searching things like “cartoon picture of a boat”, then I chose an image I liked and I copy and paste it on a document, then I made LARGE LETTERS WITH A SPACE BETWEEN EACH LETTER THAT SAID “B O A T”. I made the font size as big as possible and I made it go BOLD so it was really dark and easy to read from a distance so that if I was flashing the card at a group of kids…they are all able to clearly see the way the word looks. BOLD, DARK BLACK AND THICK LETTERS. I did two on every page and 2 on the back of every page so that that one page became 4 flash cards after I printed it and cut the paper in half.

You can buy card stock paper and cut it. EVEN BETTER IS TO LAMINATE EACH PAGE BEFORE YOU CUT THEM AND THEY LAST FOR YEARS!!!! When you laminate you can just use paper.

Please email me your wins on making flash cards to teach people!!! Send me some photos of your flash cards and the kids or adults you are helping to become literate. Send it to vmwangaparish@gmail.com