Okay, these have been something I’ve wanted to make for months, but kept putting it off. I finally added this to my 36 by 36 List just so I would finally get this done.
Andrew is working on his communication skills, but since he isn’t talking it isn’t always easy to know what he wants. I’m not even sure where the flashcard idea came from, but I remember it being an awesome idea.
I didn’t want to overwhelm or confuse him, and I wanted to only focus on the most important things for him to know. Jack and I decided on 12 cards: Mommy, Daddy, Mimi, Papa, Duffey, Eat, Drink, Diaper, Cartoons, Color, Ball, and Book. I took pictures for each of these words or things he could associate with them; I also found pictures of all of us. Now I don’t have any fancy picture editing system so I just used Word.
I created a table of 2X4 portrait table. I typed each word on the bottom of each rectangle and inserted the picture for that word. All of the item pictures were photographed on white paper so it was super easy to remove the background using the Word Picture Remove Background tool. The pictures of us and Duffey took a little more time to remove the background just right. Since my home printer doesn’t print on cardstock I had OfficeMax print four copies of the set. However, I took them home to cut them out and then used our laminate machine. They would have been able to cut and laminate them but would have cost $1 per cute and $2 per laminate page, which would have added up pretty quickly.
Once all of the flashcards were laminated, I trimmed each card out and bundled them together. Andrew seems to really enjoy the cards, but he is still getting the hang of them. When someone asked him where mommy was, holding up the card of me, he went to the office door where I was inside working; at least he knows who I am and where I was!
Andrew is working on his communication skills, but since he isn’t talking it isn’t always easy to know what he wants. I’m not even sure where the flashcard idea came from, but I remember it being an awesome idea.
I didn’t want to overwhelm or confuse him, and I wanted to only focus on the most important things for him to know. Jack and I decided on 12 cards: Mommy, Daddy, Mimi, Papa, Duffey, Eat, Drink, Diaper, Cartoons, Color, Ball, and Book. I took pictures for each of these words or things he could associate with them; I also found pictures of all of us. Now I don’t have any fancy picture editing system so I just used Word.
I created a table of 2X4 portrait table. I typed each word on the bottom of each rectangle and inserted the picture for that word. All of the item pictures were photographed on white paper so it was super easy to remove the background using the Word Picture Remove Background tool. The pictures of us and Duffey took a little more time to remove the background just right. Since my home printer doesn’t print on cardstock I had OfficeMax print four copies of the set. However, I took them home to cut them out and then used our laminate machine. They would have been able to cut and laminate them but would have cost $1 per cute and $2 per laminate page, which would have added up pretty quickly.
Once all of the flashcards were laminated, I trimmed each card out and bundled them together. Andrew seems to really enjoy the cards, but he is still getting the hang of them. When someone asked him where mommy was, holding up the card of me, he went to the office door where I was inside working; at least he knows who I am and where I was!
