DIY Flash Cards for Toddlers

Before the age of two, Little Mister became a pro at "Head & Shoulders, Knees & Toes" by pointing out every part of his body that was in the song, as well as also knowing his elbow, belly, and booty. I am so proud of that little guy for knowing his body parts and I have been dying to get him started on recognizing colors, shapes, and even begin him on numbers and counting, but I was at a loss of where to start. Identifying body parts is much easier because, well…they're on you! I decided it was time to brainstorm on how to get Little Mister familiar with colors, shapes, and counting and it didn't take long before the lightbulb turned on. Flashcards.

Now me being the cheap momma that I am really didn't want to go out and buy flashcards because I remember having flash cards when I was young…they were bitten, bent, torn up, and lost, and that's money down the drain. I decided I would try and make my own to see how they turned out and I loved the idea that I could just save them onto my computer and be able to reprint them any time I needed to! 

Lets save some money! I'm going to show you how to make your own flash cards in less than 10 minutes! 

What You Need:

A Computer/Laptop

Internet Access

A Printer w/ Colored Ink

Scissors

Start by pulling up whatever word processor you have on your computer and take a screenshot of the blank white canvas. Next, crop your screenshot so that it is just the "white paper".

You will then go to your internet browser and go to http://www.picmonkey.com. Choose "Edit A Photo" and pull up the blank screen shot you just created. 

Once your "white paper" is pulled up in PicMonkey, resize it to 2550 X 3300 pixels.

You will then visit the overlays section of PicMonkey (the butterfly icon) and click on Geometric to pull up your shapes. I chose to use a circle, square, triangle, rectangle, and oval. For each overlay I changed the color so that one flash card could be multifunctional!

I decided to create a few more shapes and colors and added in a star, a diamond (which I created by putting two triangles together, you will not find a diamond shape on PicMonkey), and an arrow. I also added in a couple of counting flash cards by adding circle overlays and adding text for the numbers.

Once your flash card sheet is created, save the photo to an easily accessible place on your computer!

Print out the flash cards when you're ready to use them with your toddler, make sure to use colored ink! I highly recommend printing on card stock so that your flash cards are a little more durable, but if all you have is regular printer paper that will work too! The cards that I printed were on regular printer paper because my card stock is at our new house! I will reprint once the regular paper flash cards gets wore down. 

Using your scissors, cut out the flash cards so that you and your toddler may begin to use them! The final step in this project is to have fun & learn! 

What I love most about DIYing your own flash cards is that you can customize them to whatever you'd like! If your child is at a more advanced stage in their learning process you can make new flash cards, or you can even have fun with your child and let them choose which color the shapes are! The sky is the limit when you're DIYing! 

A Note From the Author: Right after I created these flash cards I sat down with Little Mister and started telling him the shapes. Within the first round of flash cards he had learned two new words (star and square) and was able to identify them both on the second round! I was a proud momma!