Words

[PinkDaydreams]

Morning all!
Please can I ask, when did you all start using those flash cards with numbers and words on? Can anyone recommend a good set or where to buy them from please?
Thank you!

Never. My nearly 3 year has advanced speak and maths skills. She is taken an interest in individual letters and can write her name. It’s a very very easy one!

The best things you can do for lit and num is talk lots, sing songs including number songs (5 little ducks ect) and read lots and lots of books. Allow lots of opportunity for mark making and activities to develop fine motor skills to build towards writing.

A lot reading is about inference so make sure they have lots of experience of the world eg shopping, bus, posting letters, cash points and other every day experiences.

Never, though I did have some, can't remember when or where they came from, someone passed them on to me.

Talking and reading with your baby/toddler is what's needed. I wouldn't spend the money necessarily myself.

Never bothered. Use house numbers when you're out for a walk, street names (if simple), and any other written words in every day life: cereal packets, signs, adverts at the bus stop etc.

Once in nursery they'll use them regardless you can pick good ones from the works or ryemans even home bargain s sometimes has them use whatever you think will help little one regardless of what other people do sometimes close up visuals like flash cards can be a big help with some children just as the posters for walls can be.

I didn’t bother. I waited until ds could hold a crayon and showed him how to write his name. It sort of went on from there.

As for talking, he’s never needed any encouraging..!

Someone bought us word flash cards a few years ago. Now my daughter is 4 and at school she likes to go through them reading the words. I wouldn't have bought them myself but actually she loves doing it.

Thank you all! Honestly I never stop talking to him but wasn’t sure if that would actually help I was getting very funny looks from customers in the supermarket this morning when I was showing him a pear, “hmmm a tasty pear, P E A R, pear. A green pear”. I do this with everything as well as singing but it doesn’t look like he’s listening to me or he’s thinking ‘shut up mum!’ 😂😂

You don't need to do all that repeating about the pear. Just chat to him like normal and it'll go in. I natter to my 1 year old when we're in shops but it's more like 'what was it we needed? Do we need more cake?'

Just normal speak is needed. Remember to leave lots of space for him to respond. How old is he?

We have the flash cards as my little boy loved sorting them into rows and generally choosing his favourite things from them. I’m now using them with DS2 and thinking when DS1 starts school soon he’ll get back into them but with spelling rather than just talking.

Agree with PP though about general natter - remember vividly getting very funny looks from other shoppers when explaining to my very young baby that ‘we would not be ripped off by the system recognising that supermarket brand line cordial was less than an 8th the price of branded lime’. It maybe seemed like a not too important life lesson for a baby!

And again as PP sometimes I do a lot of ‘there’s a doggy. Can you say doggy?’ It’s all very exaggerated but I love yapping so find it all quite fun and natural.

Thank you so much for all of the helpful replies! He’s only one, I feel more confident now that you all chat away to your little ones and that I’m not a crazy lady just talking away about fruit, veg, cereal, the buildings, different coloured cars we can see etc

Just talk to him and read to him. They have very specific ways of teaching spelling and phonics when they start school. It’s not something you want to do before then. He’ll have years of doing boring stuff like that.

Read with them, learned reading quite young myself and passed it on, the whole love of learning, bonding while doing it, has all sors of positive connotations that last for ages.

I read loads to him, even though a lot of the time he isn’t bothered! We go to the library at least once a week as well, to be honest though he’s got more books than the library 😂 my mum used to read loads to me when I was little so I want to carry it on with my little one.