Animal Cards: Find the animal

I love having a laminator. It really helps ideas become feasible. Like this one - Super simple animal flash cards. I printed out stock animal photos that I found on google images, cut them to the size I wanted, and laminated them. Done. Can you tell I like easy? I don't think there is a problem printing out the pictures for personal use. A couple of them have very faint watermarks on them - but I don't really notice. I picked ones with faint watermarks. I found searching for "_(animal)__ on white background" was the best search for these pictures. I made about 15 cards with farm and zoo animals.

Alyssa and Abby had a little different style of play when it comes to these cards. Alyssa likes to line them up on the table, or stack them in her hand and carry them around. Abby likes to eat or bend or shake them. Today, I tried to do a more structured approach and focus on animal recognition. I would put a 3-5 in a row on the table and ask Alyssa where a specific animal was. Although I know she knows her animals, she wasn't very interested in playing the game. She would just collect all the animals and do her stacking or sorting. It was a little frustrating but oh well.

Then I decided to do it with Abby. I was curious how her animal recognition was. We do a lot of animal play but I've never expected her to really pick out the right animal. She usually just crawls around up on the table while eating the cards. I guess I was totally underestimating my little girl! We started with two cards on the table, but while she still got the animal right, it was less clear because she was moving around so much. It was better when she was sitting on my lap and I would hold up two cards. She got the cat, the duck, the dog, and the bird right every time! And she was so proud of herself. I was extremely pleased with her, too! I hope she will show Daddy tonight.

Quick thoughts:

• Slow Abby down and challenge her recognition more. She can understand what I am saying and she can recognize the animals. Help her learn more animals. Holding her on my lap and  holding the cards really helped us both focus and provided a simple direction for her to follow. 
• Be patient with Alyssa. She likes to arrange the cards and hold them and that is ok. We can incorporate recognition another time or another way. She is still learning her animals as we talk about the cards she is holding and make their animals sounds.