Here’s an easy variation on teaching animal sounds to your little one. Print out brightly colored pictures of a few favorite animals (or cut them from children’s magazines) and have them laminated.

Now you have the perfect “flash cards” for having fun with sounds.

Veronika knows and copies two of these already: cat:meow and dog:woof, so I showed her these cards first.

She loved the cat image so much she hugged it and didn’t want to put it down.

The dog got her experimental “ffff” sound, plus silly play.

When I showed her the cow and asked,”Who says moooooo?” in a loud imitation, she looked up at me in delight. She’d never heard such a long moo. I think she even tried to vocalize it back.

We also went through a few common animals like horse:neigh, pig:oink and sheep:baa.

The cards themselves were a delight to her, so we’ll keep these around for lots of play and learning!