Flash cards are a great, interactive way to introduce new language to your toddler. With the new technology of smart phones and tablets, engaging your child with stimulating sounds and visuals on the go or at home has become as simple as touching a screen.
Kindergarten.com, which specializes in creating educational resources for children, offers a series of flashcard applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch designed to help your child’s language development using the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis.
One of their apps, ABA Flash Cards – Actions, focuses on teaching your child action verbs, which form a crucial component of your child’s growing ability to communicate. Action verbs help a child identify and articulate what is going on as well as form conscious ideas of what they are doing.
The app features a collection of straightforward, colorful and engaging images that illustrate active verbs for your toddler. The flashcards clearly pronounce each action word, which is also printed along the top of the image, reinforcing the sound of the word and encouraging your child to repeat it.
In addition, Classical music plays continuously in the background to provide a stimulating auditory as well as visual experience and to maintain the child’s focus on the activity. Through this, the app also familiarizes your child with the work of several famous Classical composers, including Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.
According to their website, “At Kindergarten.com our flash cards are specifically created to stimulate learning and provide tools and strategies for creative, effective language building. Flash cards can be a great tool for fostering the mastery of new words, building vocabulary and conveying new concepts.”
The app has received many positive reviews and averages 4+ stars on iTunes. Parents appreciate the simplicity of the design and the ease of use, which make it great for your toddler to interact with himself, like he would a story book or a favorite toy.
While the app is designed to address both audio and visual learning styles, parents may also use the app as an opportunity to incorporate kinesthetic learning. Performing the action verbs that are written and pictured on the flash cards with your child adds another dimension of play, muscle memory, and comprehension of the activity, as well as giving parents a more personal and interactive role in a tech-based learning strategy.
Kindergarten.com offers several other educational apps for different ages and areas of developmental focus, from speech development and listening to problem solving and categorization. All of their products are available on iTunes and are compatible with iPhones and iPod Touch devices, many of them for free and $0.99 – affordable, easy, and great for on-the-go learning!
