Cut poster board into 6 inch by 22 inch long strips. The easiest way to do this it to buy poster board in packs from an office supply company. Take the packs of poster board to Minute Man Press or Kinko's and ask them to cut the poster board for you. They will cut up to 100 sheets of poster board at a time. You will be left with a 10 inch by 22 inch strip. If you have this cut in half (making it 10 inches by 11 inches) you can use these to make books later on. Most text is written too small for babies to see. Most reading philosophies suggest waiting until a child has developed 20/20 vision (around five years of age). Making the letters larger is another way of solving this difficulty.
Write words on the cards in large block letters using a wide tip red marker. The ideal width of the marker tip should be about one inch. Start with words your child hears regularly like his name, mommy and daddy. Make as many word cards as you can think of. It is helpful to have a pile ready to go, waiting for when you need them. You may choose to use categories like animal names, dinosaurs, color words, or even plant species. The choice of words is yours, so be creative and have fun.
Choose the first five words your baby will learn and put them in a set. An example of a family set would be: mommy, daddy, Jeffery, Helen, and Johnson. Place a thick rubber band around this set to keep it organized when you are not using it.
Sit in front of your baby with the set of five word cards. In your most excited happy voice say "We are going to learn to read." Then show the baby the card, reading the words out loud as fast as you can. With practice you should be able to do all five word cards in less then five seconds. Let your inner cheerleader go wild as you praise and encourage your little one for her hard work. This should last for about ten seconds or so. Some parents find that holding their child on their lap and reading words works best.
Put the cards away and enjoy your regular activities. After an hour or so, you may bring the cards out and have a second reading session just like the first one described above. Put the cards away again. You may do another session in about an hour. When your child has seen the card set three times in one day, he has finished that set for the day.
After the third day of showing cards you may choose one card to retire. Put this card in a storage place and add a new card from the pile of pre-made cards. For example, you may replace the card that says mommy with a card that says grandma. From this point on you should retire one word card a day and add a new word card each day.
You can continue to work with one set of five cards showing it three times a day or you can now begin to add more sets of cards. Some parents have used as many as ten sets of cards a day but this is not required and takes a lot of organization.