ABC’s Good Morning America did a story earlier this month on the benefits of gesturing (and signing) on child development.
“Does your baby shake her head when you try to feed her vegetables? Though that may be frustrating from a nutritional perspective, it can mean good things for her educational future…”
See the full story here:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=6901286&page=1
As you probably know, I’m a HUGH fan of baby sign language. I love language development (I used to teach French immersion k – gr 2 ) and I really believe signing at an early age helps their oral language skills later. And the studies all agree with me too. 🙂 Anyways. I signed with both Julia and Ahren with great results. It was so great to be able to communicate with them. Once when we were in home depot Ahren started excited signing bird bird and at first we thought he’s crazy, but then sure enough near the roof there were some sparrows who had snuck in to the store. He was so excited to share that with us. Another time when Julia was about 14 months, she was over at her grandparents and she started waving her hand up and down. My in-laws didn’t recognize the sign, so they phoned us. We weren’t sure at first. So I asked them what were they talking about. Turns out they were talking about their neighbour who had decided to buy a boat for the cottage. Julia was listening. She understood and was exciting signing boat boat boat to be part of the conversation. Those are the types really great experiences that signing creates.
And as soon as Markus is 7 months, we’ll start signing with him too.
If you are looking for support for signing here in the Regina, the library has wonderful resources (books, baby books, and dvds) and Ferrah Graham is awesome too. She teaches classes for adults, as well as for babies and their parents. Plus she usually gives my students a discount, so ask her about it. 🙂 http://www.babysignsprogram.com/withferrah/
Cheers and happy signs,
Marie
