How To Create Inexpensive Visual Aids for Teaching

May 11, 2009

“Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day,
Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”

Isn’t that the essence of what we are trying to do with our children as we teach them day in and day out? We want them to be prepared for life, no matter what gets thrown at them. We want them to be versatile and tough! I’m so glad to know that I get to play such a big part in the life of my children!!

As we go about teaching our children, we begin to find that they respond well to lots of different ways of presenting an idea or a new concept. It is nice to have a very diverse selection of tools in our “teaching tool chest” that we can pull out at a moments notice in order to drive a point home or reinforce something with them. I have seen many different statistics but it seems that roughly half of the population learns best through their eyes, they are visual learners!

In this article, I’d like to present some ideas to help you fill up the “teaching tool chest” with a few more visual aids. If I have something in front of the eyes of my preschoolers, I am almost guaranteed to have their riveted attention. Even with my fourth grader, if he can see it, he can pay attention to it. Whether you have visual learners or not, everyone can benefit from learning through multiple senses.

Dry Erase Board. I did not realize, until recently, how invaluable a dry erase board can be! I was at a friend’s home doing some preschool story-telling when I noticed the chalk board they have and started drawing as I told the story. The kids were all paying very close attention to see what I would draw next – and to see how silly it would look!! Believe me when I say that I am definitely not the most talented artist ever!! I knew that I could not go out and get a chalk board for many different reasons, but my husband thought of the dry erase board. It has worked perfectly for us! Here are the many ways we have used a dry erase board …
- Bible and other stories – this is so great because you can change facial expressions on your characters with the wipe of a finger!
- Language Art – draw upper case and lower case letters for them to identify
- Language Arts – I drew, for instance, a bear, a dog and a tree and asked them what didn’t belong. We did several sets of those.
- Language Arts – draw a word very clearly, ask them to guess or sound it out, then draw the picture to go with the word
- Math – draw a number, ask them to hold up the right number of fingers, then illustrate that number. For instance, draw a 3, then draw three cars.
- Math - draw three apples on the right side, ask them to count. Draw one apple on the left side, ask them to count. Then have them count all of them and talk about adding.
- Let them draw on the board during playtime. I suggest getting a different set of markers from what you use when schooling.
- If you don’t have a calendar, you could draw out the calendar each morning before they get up and then do a “calendar time” with them.
- Write out a short schedule and help them to follow it.

Paper Dolls. There are a few great websites that allow you to print out paper dolls for free. Some have different clothes, short hair, long hair, various props and lots of other things to help make your story come to life.
- Print a background, cut slits into the background and fasten a long, thin piece of paper to your doll. Put the doll in front of the background and push the paper through the slit. Then, you can move the doll around as needed throughout the background without your hands getting in the way.
- Glue felt onto the back of the paper dolls and have a large felt piece where you can stick the dolls during the story or lesson. You can also draw a generic scene based on what you are doing.
- Have the child(ren) hold a doll and you can role play. Ask them a question such as “What should you do in this situation?” and have them play it out with the dolls. If you are working one-on-one, you could play with the other doll and lead the role playing situation.
- Tell a story or teach a lesson. Then, bring out the dolls and have the children re-tell or re-teach the lesson with the dolls.
- Here are the two sites I know of that allow you to print paper dolls:
  - Making Friends
  - Marilee’s Paper Dolls (I almost did not post this link. Marilee has a website of links to other websites that have paper dolls. Quite a few of the links are broken as I browsed through and I didn’t want to inconvenience my readers. But, there are enough good links that I thought I would just include it anyway with this disclaimer. I did send Marilee an email and maybe the links will either get fixed, which I’m sure it a ton of work, or the links will get pared down to only those that work.)

Alphabet/Phonics Flash Cards. Not just for sitting at the table and flashing them to your kids any more! These can be used for lots of different things around the house. I have gotten many different sets of flash cards at the store for a little more than a dollar – beginning sight words, advanced sight words, phonics, alphabet, math games, etc. They are fun and very helpful when you have five minutes to fill up here or three minutes to fill up there.
- Attach flash cards that represent the beginning sound to items around the house. Attach the “ch” to the chair, “r” to the refrigerator, the “b” to the book on the bookshelf, etc.
- Tape the lower case letters around the house. Sit at the table with them and show them the lower case letters. Have them race to get the same letter or show each child a different letter and race to find their letter and get back to you first.
- Spread the cards on the floor. Say a word and see who can find the beginning sound first.

Coloring Pages. The illustrations on coloring pages are usually large, clear, and easy to distinguish. There are also many sites on the web that have a large offering of free coloring pages to print.
- You can use a particular illustration to tell a story. Tape the page up so all the children can see it and color with markers as you tell the story to keep their attention.
- Have the children tell a story based on an illustration.

Magazines. I was able to get a veritable boatload of free magazines by going to my local FreeCycle group and asking for any magazines that people had lying around. Please let them know that you will be using these magazines for your kids to cut and you will be sure to get decent magazines. I had quite a few people email me with bags full of magazines!
- Create a collage to tell a story or teach a lesson. You could make several separate storboards that you bring out in succession or put everything on one poster board or sheet of paper.
- Teach a lesson or tell a story and then have the children cut pictures out of the magazine that illustrate or remind them of what was just talked about. Have them glue it to a piece of paper and talk about it – ask them why they chose certain pictures.
- Pick a topic and have them cut out pictures that follow – the color red, the letter “B”, happiness, families, etc.

As you can see, these are not very complex ways to engage your visual learners. The idea is to get something colorful and different in front of their little eyeballs. Almost anything that you can print and color or cut out can be used as a visual aid!

Do you have some great visual aids that you have used when teaching your children? Please join in the conversation and let us know!

And, as always, keep on growing!