I tried to concentrate on countries which are neighbouring countries of Hungary, or I have some information about, or we have already been to etc. I, myself, coloured them AGAIN. (I hope baby Jesus will bring me a colour printer for Christmas). To make the flashcards more durable I laminated them (that was the easier part).
Activities you can do with flags:
- just have a look and say the name of the country
- name the colours on the flag
- say if the stripes are vertical or horizontal (E. loves long words)
- tell your child the capital
- talk about the country if you know it (in our case for instance: Ireland, Mommy lived there for a year a long time ago, the U.K. - this is where A. (our native nanny) comes from, Turkey - this is where Mommy and Daddy were on their honeymoon, Hungary - we live in Hungary etc.
- show two flags and ask: which one is ... ? and your child can pick the right one (E. likes this activity not only with cards, but also with soft toys, building blocks, flowers or coloured pencils.... whatever)
- turn down three cards and let your child turn them up one by one, then say the name of the country (and the capital or the colours - combination of 1.-2.-4.)
- spread all the cards on the floor and tell your child to choose his or her favourite one (maximum three - E. would give me all the cards :) )
- pick the flags with the same colours and group them (red-white: Switzerland, Poland and Austria, blue-white-red: the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, red-white-green: Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, black-yellow-red: Germany, Belgium)
- if you make 2 sets you can play a memory game (I had neither time, nor energy to make two sets)
More flags are on the way:
- I want to make England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
- I cannot leave out the USA and Australia as they are among the most important English speaking countries
- Countries of Asia, Africa and South America are coming too
Oh, I forgot to mention that we don't use all the cards at once. Only 6-8 cards at a time. Now I have just selected some of them according to how we can connect to them (the UK - our native nanny is from there, Romania - a friend of mine comes from the Hungarian part of it, - Germany - where E.'s uncle lives, Ireland - where Mommy lived for a year, Hungary - where we live, Turkey - where we were on honeymoon, and there is one more which doesn't come to my mind now :)
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