A little while ago, my grandmother mentioned that a cousin of mine was using sign language with her baby. I had heard of the idea before, and was intrigued, but went no further with it. A couple little while later, I introduced the ASL manual alphabet, which I learned from my (other) grandmother when I was a little girl, to Katja and Annalissa. I hoped that the manual alphabet would help them to remember the spelling of the words we learned in our reading lessons. The girls thought that was a lot of fun, which got me doing more signing research, especially regarding signing with babies. The more I read, the more signing with Felicity seemed to be a good idea. So I bookmarked some websites and bought a book.
The Baby Signing Book by Sara Bingham is exactly what I was hoping it would be – it’s even Canadian! In the first part, the author explains Baby Signing, and gives suggestions for signing at each stage. The second part includes an ASL dictionary of 350 common signs. Some signs are hard to visualise from a book; when in doubt, we check with our favourite online dictionary, Signing Savvy.
We began by signing just a few words, as we learned them: milk, more, cereal, eat, finished, etc. The Wee Hands website had a "getting started sheet" that I printed off and hung on the fridge. Once they learned a few signs, the girls were hooked! Felicity especially likes to watch Lissa sign. Gabriel is not terribly interested, but I think he will catch on. He doesn’t mind us signing to him; he just has no interest in signing back yet. He has signed milk once or twice to Felicity, so I guess he thinks signing is just for her.
A quick online search on Baby Signing will bring up lots of results. These are our favourite resources:
Baby Fingers has an introductory webinar. Lora Heller explains what a Webinar is, gives some ideas for signing opportunities, shows a few signs, and introduces the alphabet. There is also another introductory webinar in which she is reading and signing a story. This one is excellent, and has a lot of animal signs and colours: Brown Bear. Baby Fingers is now offering a Spring Special Introductory rate for Webinars. You can find the schedule and more details on their schedule page (go to www.mybabyfingers.com and look on the menu on the left-hand side of the page).
Sara Bingham is the founder of Wee Hands and the author of The Baby Signing Book. There is some helpful information on the Wee Hands Blog as well.
Baby Signs is a well-known program. They document the benefits of signing with babies and the reults of their scientific research. There are several more articles available in the library, including this one about Bilingual Families (.pdf file).
And one more helpful resource: What is Baby Sign Language? There are many helpful pages on this site.
Enjoy!
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