Learning Aid: Flashcards - Hebrew Letters

Inspiration: I just made these a little over a week ago and I'm super excited about them.  We had a small party to celebrate our daughter's first haircut (similar to the traditional Upsherin held for Jewish boys at age 3).  Part of the tradition for the first haircut is that Jewish children start learning about their culture and more specifically, the Hebrew language.  I thought this would be a great time to start teaching her the Hebrew Aleph-Bet (letters), so I made some flashcards.

How I Made Them:  I used old business cards that I had from a previous job and calligraphied each letter onto a card.  I used a Coit 3/8" calligraphy pen and black India Ink.  I took a 2nd card (since I couldn't use both sides) and wrote the name of the letter, it's sound as related to English, and a word that begins with that letter in Hebrew (I didn't take a photo of the back because they don't look nearly as good!).  I taped the two cards together to hide my old business card and then laminated them using my Xyron ez-Laminator.

Alternatives:

• I know I can get business card sized paper at Hollo's Papercraft.  That would have worked better with the laminator as the double-thickness of traditional business cards might not hold up as long as I'd like.
• I could have colored the letters with gel pen after doing the calligraphy with the black just so that it might hold her attention longer.
• Flashcards can be made of just about anything.  My daughter is almost 2 1/2 so letters, numbers, colors, and shapes would all be great things to start with.  For preschools, cards about weather, common objects, animals, etc. would also be good.  Of course, vocabulary words are always great for school-age children to practice with.  I'm even toying with making a set for creating words when she's ready - with a blank followed by a-t (e.g. _at) and then smaller letter sets to match in front (e.g., c, b, f, h, th, ch, m, gn, s, wh, etc.).