How to Use Flash Cards When Homeschooling

Video Transcript

"Using flash cards. The second most important tool we're going to use after the basic notebook is flash cards. Flash cards are great and I find they are one of the best learning tools from the earliest child that can learn to pick up a card up until college students and beyond. I've used them a lot to learn a lot of things. What we do is I like to keep them in a box. I like to keep the different types of cards separated by rubber bands and if you run out of boxes, if you run out of your box you can get more boxes. I take them out of the rubber band and this is how the rule works. You make a pile to start with, the cards that you're going to work on. You see how fast you want to go and you see if you can say the answer or say the word. In this case it would be you. If they get it right it goes in a good pile. You designate where the good pile is. My-goes in the good pile. The-no that's incorrect, that goes in the bad pile, you designate a place for the bad pile. And always keep the good pile and the bad pile the same wherever you decide to put it. The-yes. Of-yes. He-no, that's she, that goes in the bad pile. We-good. He-good. Was-excellent. Buy-alright, look at that you got them all right except for the ones in this pile. So what do we do? Leave these here, move these into the pile we're working with and we do it over again. What is this? She-yes, that time you got it right. The-nope, missed that again, go back in the bad pile. Start again, take the ones out of the bad pile, work on them. To-yes. The session doesn't end until all the cards are in the good pile and that's when you know for this moment at this time all of these cards have been mastered. Then you can take a break and do the whole thing over again, the same day or the next day. As you go on, you'll find of course more and more cards stay in the good pile. Eventually when they learn them completely the fun thing, you can stat eliminating cards and say you've got this word right 10 times in a row the last 10 days, no problem you didn't even flinch. We're going to pull it out of the pile and we're going to toss it or we're going to put it in a special section for your little brother or sister when they're ready. And children love that, that they mastered something and they can even eliminate it."