Our Midwife Stephanie's office Nurturing Hearts Birth Services started partnering with a local signing organization called My Smart Hands. The owner of the company comes out once a week, for four weeks and teaches a level one signing class. I have always been fascinated with this concept. Multiple languages are best learned at a young age, so it sands to reason, that babies can learn to sign fairly easily at a young age. So, I checked out the website and got inspired by this video on the home page..... check it out!
Pretty neat huh? I really want Porter to learn to do this. It is fairly easy with consistency and practice. There are so many benefits to baby signing including ( from the My Smart Hand Home Page)....
•Reduces frustration
•Accelerates verbal development
•Strengthens cognitive skills
•Enhances child-parent bonding through time spent teaching signs to your baby.
Research shows that pre-verbal infants can communicate through the use of sign language long before they can verbalize their needs. At My Smart Hands™, we offer classes and workshops that will give you the skills and knowledge you will need to communicate with your pre-verbal, hearing baby. If you are looking for baby and toddler sign language classes, My Smart Hands™ is here to meet your needs. Learn how signs taken from American Sign Language (ASL) can help you engage your child in two-way communication.
Porter is a couple months away from being able to sign back, but many of my mommy friends have babies that sign tons of stuff at 11 months. For now, Neil and I are learning ourselves, practicing and using them constantly with Porter. Now, when we make the sign for 'milk' he gets excited and bounces up and down. So, slowly it is working. We are only three weeks into it so the best is yet to come! This month we are working on Mama, Dada, Milk, Eating and All Done. To be followed by Please and Thank You. Hopefully soon I can record Porter doing his signs!
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Very cool! I did Sign with Lily when she was an infant (I took a year of it in high school), but tapered off shortly after she started (audibly) speaking... I think it's definitely beneficial in terms of teaching communication effectively for a lot of people/children.
ReplyDeleteKeep us updated on how progress goes!
Hey Linsay,
ReplyDeleteLots of my friends have used sign language with their kids and I am a huge fan. The studies are completely in favor of it for language development and acquisition. You can start doing hand over hand right now and you might be surprised at what Porter can already do. I know kids as young as six months that can start doing the signs. We are going to do hand over hand from a very early age, and we have a few little board books with signs. I can't wait to see how it goes!!