More every day signing games to play

I have been focussing my blogs on Signing games to play with our babies. They are very simple things everyone can do, no matter how busy we are!

This next game is one which my daughter loved as she was getting older. It helps to reinforce knowledge of phonemes (the sound of individual letters) and the fingerspelling – building a solid foundation to recognise graphemes (the written letter) at an early age.

When you are on long car journeys, or on the way to the supermarket, play the ‘I SPY’ game…with fingerspelling!

This may take a while for your child to learn particularly if she has never played it before.

You start of by saying: “I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘t-t-t’” (Signing the letter “t”)

If she doesn’t understand the game, say: “T-T-TREE” starts with a “T” (SIGNING “T”)

Find another thing beginning with the same letter.

Try other letters as well – this game can be played endlessly!

Your child will eventually learn to listen to the first sound of the words she knows – and she will learn the corresponding sign as well.

Take a look at this clip to see my daughter reading – at 2 ½ years of age!

http://www.sign2learn.signingbabies.co.uk/

SignShine Gives Back!

Last week I got an invitation to participate at the 3rd Annual Leimert Park Book Fair . What an honor! Leimert Park Book Fair's mission is promoting Literacy among underserved communities in Los Angeles.

Signing is also a great way to emphasize the content of the books you read with a child. If you sign when reading, you are constantly underlining the characters and action you are narrating, which deepens your child’s understanding of the books you and he read.

Research regarding signing with children shows that continuing to sign with speaking children actually acts as an effective tool for expanding kindergarteners’ receptive and expressive English vocabularies, and raises their emergent reading level, too. (Daniels, Marilyn, Dancing with Words: Signs for Hearing Children’s Literacy.)

SignShine™ Gives Back to the community:

Promoting Educational Literacy among underserved Los Angeles communities.
3rd Annual Leimert Park Book Fair
Saturday, June 6th, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Etel's performance: 11:30-12:00

We look forward to celebrate books with you.

Let the Sign Shine!
etel

Etel Leit, M.S.
Founder & Owner http://www.signshine.com/
Publisher http://www.babysignshine.com/

Baby with Deaf parents not signing!?

Using Sign language in your household does not in itself guarantee that your child will sign/communicate from a younger age.

Before you react with horror to this statement, let me clarify…:

I recently looked after my 1-year old godson who was not able to sign. He also didn’t speak, other than ‘mamamama’ ‘dadada’ etc. He was really quite an average cute little 1-year old.

The strange thing is that his mother and father are both profoundly deaf and use sign language to communicate!

So why did this boy not sign?

Parents who can speak sometimes have children who (despite there being no medical reason for them not to speak) are delayed in their verbal development.

Teaching a baby about communication (signed and spoken), requires effort and time.

Here are some very important signing strategies:

· Get eye contact

· Using relevant signs/ words

· Repeat the sign/ word as many times within the context as you can

· Make it fun – play games in which the word is used

· Listen/ look for and react to their effort to communicate back to you!

· Praise their efforts, however small

In the case of my godson, his mum and dad have had a very stressful 6 months and I know that they have not had the time or energy to focus on 1:1 communication – at a time when it was very crucial for their son’s language development.

In the short time I had with him, I gave him my undivided attention and we played several ‘signing’ games, using the above guidelines. At the end of the day I had seen him attempting to sign about 3 different words!

This has encouraged me to write down some simple activities everyone can do in their daily routine – which I will publish in my next Blogs.

Please feel free to join my Facebook site “Signing Babies” for more blogs!

www.signingbabies.co.uk

www.sign2learn.co.uk