Reading cards is a great way to set your kids on the path of early learning right from the comfort of your home.They can serve as an ideal learning aid in the early years of a child’s education and aid in her brain stimulation.

Follow these DIY steps to create your own reading cards :

Step 1. Take a thick marking pen. Use red initially as kids love bright colours. Also, use white cardboard  placards (6”x24” size.)

Step 2. Pick a word. Use words that are interesting or common to your kids surroundings e.g. body parts. Avoid using words like ‘cat’, ‘hat’, ’bat’, ‘mat’,  too much as it can become boring and since they sound similar can confuse the child. Interesting words that sound different will be easily remembered by your child e.g ‘Spinach' , 'Flute’ etc.

Step 3. Write your word in a font size of 3 to 5 inches to begin with. As you increase the no. of words and move onto couplets or sentences, change the colour to black and decrease the font size. Being too many words, it’s easier on the eye for the kid than red.

Step 4. Remember to write the word at the back of each card for your own reference in order to read them out loud as you flash them to your child.

Step 5. Ideally show the cards in sets of five and flash each card for less than a  second while enunciating the word/words. Do this a couple to three times in a day to aid retention and recall as kids learn with repetition.

You will observe that reading cards can increase your child’s vocabulary greatly.

However, as a rule of thumb, never thrust this learning process upon your kids. Instead ensure that you make the process interesting, engaging and fun. If despite that on any given day your child seems disinterested in the cards, respect her choice and call it a day.

This way you’ll ascertain that your little one can always come back to learning joyfully on another occasion as opposed to disliking the whole process altogether.