Toddler Flash Card Ideas

[element2012]

DD seems to be very interested in learning words right now and I wanted to make her some flashcards with words she may like to learn.  So far I've made animals and colors, what else would be good to show to a 13 months old with a bit of an appetite for new words?

[skycheattraffic]

Household things and food items are great. In principle it should also make day to day communication helpful

[cali2tx]

Fruits, vegetables & other foods. Toys & vehicles like teddy bear, bike, car, book, ball. Nature stuff like tree, flower, sun.
Consider making cards with photos of family members & pets (they did something like this at my daughters daycare) to teach names like Mommy, Daddy, Papa, Grammy, Nana, Grandpa, Fido etc.

Your little one may be too young at this point but at some point you could introduce numbers.

[element2012]

I just found a great resource I wanted to share in case anyone is interested re: flash cards... This site has printable flash cards for signing with your baby/toddler:

http://www.babysignlanguage.com/ 

Their dictionary has more signs than you could care to use!  I am re-inspired with signing, DD picked up milk, more and all done and I basically gave it up because she was starting to pick up verbalizing some words.  Then I came across a video of another baby at 13 months with an insane vocabulary of both spoken and sign words.  It seems the signing helps to reinforce spoken words. I am up printing out my flashcards now!

[Polliwog]

As a mom, and an early childhood specialist, I'm begging you. Please put away the flash cards. There is absolutely no reason to use them with a toddler. Toddlers learn language by using, and hearing, language. Talk to her, read to her, look at pictures in books and albums. Take her places. She will learn as all other humans learn.

[Polliwog]

Baby sign language is great. But, there is no reason to use flash cards or videos.

[sageowl]

My kid liked flashcards around that time, so I used some with him too, but it's easy to overdo it...hence the chorus of "nos" on your post.  This is inevitable after the fallout from things like "Your Baby Can Read".

The only thing I'm going to say there is as long as they're truly interested, and you aren't pushing, it won't hurt to do some work with flashcards. 

You can also do a lot of the same kind of vocabulary development while reading books (and pointing at the pictures).  That's a really good way to reinforce vocabulary in a similar way without it being too structured.

e.g. if you're reading a book about animals, "Can you find the dog?"  There's a lot of great little "first words" kinds of books that you can do this with.

I also used to keep these kinds of books in with my son's toys so he could look at them whenever he felt inspired.  If I noticed he was looking at them, I'd sit with him and talk about the pictures.

[element2012]

Thanks sageowl, I wasn't sure why someone would be against flashcards, but I can see some pushy parents forcing their child to keep looking at the flashcards when they are no longer interested.  That's not my interest at all.   As a side note, I used some sign flash cards more for myself as I don't know the signs, but I realized DD stopped saying some words she was already saying.  Am I confusing her? She was picking up and imitating many words and now... not so much...