Fun with flash cards

A couple months ago I bought 3 boxes of flash cards for Astrid at Costco: 1) picture words (Astrid's favorite), 2) colors and shapes, and 3) numbers.

Although the packaging says it's for children age 3+ years old, and Astrid isn't yet 2, I thought it would give Astrid a jump start on learning new words, shapes, and numbers. Plus I thought it would be something fun and easy for my nanny to do each day with Astrid to help her learn.

At first Astrid loved to pull the cards out one by one and have us tell her what the word was. She started to associate the picture with the word. For example: When she pulled the card with the picture of burning logs she would shout out "Hot!" Or when she pulled the picture of the snowman in winter wonderland she'd shout out "Cold!" There's also a picture of an octopus eating spaghetti, and Astrid knows that's the card for "eat". She also knows the card for "off" and "on". And then there are some cards that are confusing. For instance there's a picture of a hippo sitting down at a table and he's holding a crayon in his hand. Whenever Astrid sees this card she says "eat". I can see how the crayon may look like an eating utensil.

Lately she's gotten into the habit of dumping all the cards out onto the floor and picking up the ones she knows and shouting out their names. There's a card with a picture of a motorcycle on it and the word is "ride" but Astrid surprised me today by holding the card and shouting "bike!"
And then tonight this happened:

Astrid was holding a card and jumping up and down and saying "jump" over and over again. Uwe and I were both in the family room watching her and smiling at her.

I turned to Uwe and said, "You know she's holding the jump card don't you?"

Ahhh the fun of raising a toddler. It almost makes up for the tantrums.