Make Your Own Educational Posters

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The idea for this came up when I wanted to make a “sticker chart” for Gavin (something akin to those “reward star charts” parents read so much about in discipline books) so he would have a place to stick all the stickers he earned as rewards.

The original plan was for him to stick his stickers on the chart so I could keep track of how many he’d earned.  Once he had earned a certain number of stickers for good behaviour, I was going to reward him with a toy.  The only problem with this idea was that Gavin would keep peeling them off the stickers and sticking them all over the place until they lost their stickiness or got damaged beyond repair.

So I modified the chart to record the number of stickers he had collected like this:

I would record the number of stickers he had received as rewards by the name of the train.  Gavin seemed very curious to observe what I was recording on this sheet of paper, so I read out the names of the trains for him.  Since I was looking into the concept of teaching infants and toddlers to read, I tested Gavin out to see if he could tell me which written name corresponded with which train.  When he was able to make the connection between the written names of the trains and the trains, I decided to create the following poster:

The idea behind this is to teach Gavin based on a topic that he enjoyed - trains.  Although there isn’t really much value in him learning the names of the trains from Thomas and Friends, this chart was specifically to get him interested in learning the alphabet.

Did it work?

You bet!  Every morning, Gavin would wake up and run to this chart, asking me to repeat it for him.  Last night, I caught him standing in front of the chart repeating the train names and pointing to the written names as he said them.  Best of all, he loves this chart and wants me to make more for him!

The next steps are to make charts to cover the rest of the alphabet and words that actually have value in our everyday life, beginning with words he would be interested in - like bus, train, crane, shunt, steam, etc.

I made the charts while Gavin was asleep so he couldn’t insist on “helping” me.  It took me about half an hour using marker pens, train stickers and cardboard paper.  You can use other stickers or stick cut-outs of characters with glue, depending on what your child likes, or you can draw your own pictures if art is your forte.

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