Flash Card - Taking Cues from my son

A quick history. I decided to introduce flash cards early. When I found my son had down syndrome, it only made me more intent. I searched online and read about Glenn Doman's books. It took more than a month to get the books as they had to get it from the US. I was excited when I read the books. But, I was too busy with the hospital visits that I never found time to prepare the flash cards. Thankfully, I found a place close to my house where they offered program similar to Glenn Domans. I attended a one day program and material were almost in accordance with what the Glenn Doman book had said. But, even after I received the material, I have never been able to stick to the guidelines that were given in the book. Either I found no time or I kept forgetting to introduce the material as mentioned in the book. And, I felt very guilty about it.

About a few months back, while I was searching for online games appropriate to Vignesh's age, I was lucky enough to come across the fisher price online games site. ( You will see the connection with the flash card as you keep reading). I introduced him to peek-a-boo and ABC zoo game. He loved them both. I had introduced him to peek-a-boo since it was colorful that he might find it interesting. With time, I found that the game served as a 'Cause-Effect' concept. Every time he touched (or rather banged) the keyboard, there would be color and noise on the screen. He began to understand this and whenever the screen would go quite, he began to bang or scratch the keyboard harder.

Heres are the links to the peek a boo and ABC zoo games:
Peek-a-boo - http://www.fisher-price.com/us/playtime/games/infantGames_B_BS.asp
ABC zoo game - http://www.fisher-price.com/us/fun/games/abczoo/default.asp


This really helped him in the ABC zoo game since this was interactive and the keyboard has to be typed to move from one letter to another. Most of the times, he keeps pressing the keyboard until the entire alphabets and the ABC song is complete. Now, in this ABC zoo game, for every letter, an animal name starting with the alphabet along with the noise made by it is displayed. Both visual and audio parts are good and easily attracts and withholds Vignesh's attention. I would highly recommend it to others too.

Once he reaches 'Z', the next keystroke would get the ABC song that he loves. I sing this song along with the voice in the website. So, once the song begins, Vignesh would turn around, see me singing along, give me a smile and get back to staring the monitor.

And, something wonderful happened about 2 or 3 weeks back. Whenever he reached the letter 'Z', he got excited and turned around. Previously, he used to do this when the ABC song began. So, this meant that he knew what was coming next. That he was identifying the alphabets. (though I'm not sure how many he identifies and what it means to him at this point). I began to notice his behavior everyday to make sure that it was not a coincidence. I'm happy to say that it isn't. I'm so sure that he identifies at least the alphabet 'Z' if not more.

This gave me the idea. Since, he is familiar with the animals on the site, why not prepare the flash cards using the screen shots from this site. That would make it easier for him. Thus began the first step towards preparing and introducing ABC flash cards to Vignesh.

Ok, before I make this post too long and boring, let me take a break here and continue with the story tomorrow. Will post pictures of the flash card tomorrow. Sorry for such a long post. I just wanted to share all the details.