Elternratgeber Kontrastkarten

HANNIline stands for products tailored to babies’ and toddlers’ abilities and needs. These are products that they love and that, at the same time, support their development without overwhelming them.

Why our cards

tailored to baby’s vision development

Babies love our cards because they can see them in contrast to pale, light objects or pictures. This is because the motifs are age-appropriate and adapted to the peculiarities of their vision (in terms of size, colours and complexity). Our contrast cards with bold colours and strong contrasts will quickly arouse your baby’s attention and curiosity. These baby-friendly visual stimuli also stimulate the formation of fundamental connections between brain cells – the so-called synapses.

support language development

Our cards with the lovely high contrast images inspire parents, family and friends to talk more and everywhere and subsequently set an important base for the future language development of their babies.

The loving and coherent motifs provide inspiration for many colourful stories. With the help of the cards, everyone can easily and effortlessly lay an important foundation for their baby’s future language development. Learning to speak does not just begin when a child begins to form sounds or words. The more you talk to your baby, right from birth, the better. Even beyond the first year of life, our cards offer lots of clues for varied conversations and games with your toddler.

We have designed our contrast card sets in cooperation with the development psychologists.

How to use them

Position our cards about 20-30cm away from your baby’s face. Newborn babies can focus only 1-2 seconds on a specific image. The older the baby, the longer it will be able to focus on a card.

Move the cards slowly right and left, up and down and gently change the distance.

Talk about the pictures and use them to describe the world around you. What are the cards representing, what sounds are associated with the animals or vehicles, etc. Each minute you talk to your baby is a crucial investment in its future. ” A large percentage of our physical brain growth is complete by the time we are four years old. The ease with which we learn as children and the design of our entire lives are heavily predicated on what happens in those first years.” (Thirty Million Words, Building a Child’s Brain, by Dana Suskind, M.D., and Beth Suskind, 2015, Dutton)

Look for ideas. Scan our QR codes to play the sounds or read our lovely short stories (available in 3+ months and 6+month sets)

Tie the cards together to take them with you, or use our HANNIline loop to hang them near to your baby.

… and should the cards become dirty, you can easily clean them using a damp cloth.

The advantage of cards over books in black and white is that your baby can concentrate on one image. You can furthermore use the cards to create a mobile, or even put them up around the change table to keep baby occupied while changing the diaper. You could even create a gallery on the nursery wall for your baby to look at.

Why high contrast images

face

high contrast flashcard

seen through the eyes of a one-month-old baby

The world around your newborn baby is not only black and white, but also blurry. Because of this limited vision, the high contrast of black and white images are easier for a baby to perceive. Research has proven that those images register powerfully on your baby’s retina and send the strongest visual signals to your baby’s brain. At birth, the nerve cells in the brain are disorganized and not well-connected. Visual inputs cause nerve cells to multiply and form a multitude of connections with other nerve cells. This is why visual stimulation is so crucial.

Soft colours are popular in baby toys and nurseries. While these may look pretty to you, your baby cannot see them. The boldness of high contrast images stands out where everything else is blurry.

Babies can see best within a range of about 20-30cm from their eyes. This is equal to the distance between your baby’s head and your face while breastfeeding. By the way, you making faces is a most welcome visual stimulus for a baby.

Although there is some disagreement as to when babies start to see colour, it doesn’t appear to be until around 3 to 6 months. And it does not happen at once. The first colour to see is red followed by green, yellow and blue. After about six months the infant has adequate acuity and contrast sensitivity in nearby space, and operating cortical mechanisms for discriminating colours, shapes, faces, movement, stereo depth, and distance of objects, as well as the ability to focus and shift attention between objects of interest. Studies also show that infants prefer to look at black and white images.

Source: Visual Development – Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology (2017) by Janette Atkinson.

Why is language so important

Language is undoubtedly the most important means of communication. In addition, it is also extremely important for your child’s overall development. Children use language to discover the world, communicate with other people and establish social relationships.

But what do they need to learn the language? Loving and attentive care from caregivers who are good language role models and communication partners for the child. Brain research has shown that interpersonal interaction in the so-called sensitive phases of child development is of particular importance for language development. Language acquisition can only take place in a social context. The broader the range of languages offered by the parents and the environment, the easier it will be for the child to learn the respective language and the better their future language and reading skills will be. Already in their first year of life, toddlers actively observe their surroundings and begin to imitate. It is therefore important to talk to the baby from birth, even if it does not yet respond. The baby accepts the language offer with curiosity. Everything it hears during this time forms the basis for future language development.

Therefore, offer your child the opportunity to experience the joy of linguistic communication right from the start and every day. Speaking slowly, slightly raised voice, clear facial expressions and the use of gestures support your child’s language development. Every conversation is a gift for life.

Ideas for toddlers

What is missing? Show your child several cards and give him time to remember them. Then hide a card and have your child guess which card is missing.

What belongs together? Assign the individual motifs to common subject areas (e.g. food, animals, colors, habitat, everything that has wings, …)

Tell me a story. Choose three cards. Let your child invent their own story with the selected motifs or help them do so.

I can see what you cannot see. Place the cards on the table or on the floor. Choose a card in your mind and start describing the motif: colour, whether it has a tail, whether you can eat it and let your child guess what you mean. Then you can change.

Tell me more! Ask your child language-stimulating questions: What do you see on the card? What colour is the animal? Where does it live? What does a squirrel eat?

Show your baby our contrast cards and watch your baby’s eyes light up!