I have to admit, I always thought Flash Cards for kids seemed a bit ridiculous.
Just let kids be kids and don’t worry about testing them before they even get to school.
However, when my daughter started primary school, she struggled to recognise the letters in the alphabet and I wished I’d tried harder to test her before she got to five without knowing the alphabet! She could, of course, sing the alphabet song and recognise certain letters but it never occurred to me to check she knew every letter.
Many schools send prep/foundation children home with a list of common words for them to learn and once they recognise those few words they get different ones. It’s a great introduction to basic reading and kids really enjoy passing through the levels. However, at her school, they don’t let children take home words until they can recognise every letter of the alphabet, upper and lower case. As she struggled to learn her letters, she started to fall behind as her twin sister and most of the other kids started moving through the hot words.
My husband made a small version of the Letterific poster for her to refer to and for us to test her with. However, while she knew many of the letters at the start of the alphabet, I realised that she could not identify them as a single letter, e.g. if I asked her to write ‘D’ she had no idea what it looked like even though she would always correctly identify it on the poster. It occurred to me that she was using the alphabet song to sing the letters in her head and count up from a. Pretty smart but not very helpful to help her read. So my husband designed some Flash Cards with the upper and lower case on separate cards (as this is how the teacher tests them).
We used the cards to play fun games with the others kids so she wouldn’t feel pressured and tested her each night before stories – she loved being tested and was so proud every time she learnt a new letter. It helped that her sister was an enthusiastic champion and would cheer her on each time – even if she did struggle with not yelling out the answer ;-).
After two weeks of playing and testing with the cards, she knew all her letters and was extremely proud of herself. It didn’t take her long to fly through a few rounds of “Hot Words” and catch up to many of the other kids in her class.
If you have a child who is struggling to learn the alphabet, or just want to give your child a head start in learning, check out our Flash Cards.
