Sing & Sign Classes are going great and I feel so blessed to share this awesome gift with other families! I want everyone to enjoy the amazing benefits of signing with your child! I'm also excited to introduce Bebo Bear! He loves to teach children sign language!
Colby -20 months
Colby can pretty much verbalize any word he wants to or a good attempt at least, but we still encourage him to sign. He hasn't dropped many signs, and I hope he continues to learn ASL throughout his life. At this age he is learning 2-3 new signs a day because he can see a sign once and apply it. I lost count but he knows a few hundred signs.
cracker Waffle
yellow bus
Bear
Kangaroo
Cat
He saw his first rainbow in the sky and he was signing to tell me.
I have been amazed with Colby's verbal vocabulary in the last couple of weeks. It seems like he woke up one morning and realized he could talk. He tries to get our dog's toys from him so he chases him around the house saying drop it, drop it, drop it. He woke up the other morning and from his bed he started screaming Mama Mama, fruit bar, fruit bar (don't ask me what kind of a child wakes up thinking about a fruit bar). He will try to say any word we say but it doesn't always sound exactly right. I know that signing has accelerated his language skills in so many ways. Signing has made him so interested in books because he loves to read the book to me through signing. He loves to read and sign about rainbows so it made him eager to say the word rainbow, which isn't a typical word for a 16 month old. Since he loves rainbows, I started teaching him colors. He loves books about colors and has started to sign red, white, yellow, orange, and blue, as well as trying to say the words. The best book to teach colors is Brown Bear Brown Bear by Eric Carl. This is his favorite book and he has to read it several times a day.
Signing "red" "bird"
Every time I say lets read Brown Bear he signs "fish" , turns to this page, and loves the fish. I guess he likes fish!
He signs "white" "dog" and then says woof woof.
I haven't taking pictures of Colby signing lately due to his busy busy body, but I tried to catch a few on camera last night and this morning.
I asked him what was on his shirt and he signed "gorilla" and made the gorilla sound. "daddy" he says daddy perfectly but I encourage him to still sign words he can speak because it's another language that can benefit him in the future.
Plus putting signs together is laying the foundation for speaking sentences. The other day he threw my phone and then looked at me and signed "no" "throw" broke". He was able to communicate to me that he shouldn't throw my phone because it broke.
"flower" you touch both sides of your nose
this is the end of "sweet dreams" but he does it too fast for me to get the picture.
"where"
"truck"
Colby is my little preacher man. He is praying and when we get done saying the prayer he says amen.
"Jesus"
I sing Jesus Loves Me every night before bed and he babbles the entire song and signs "Jesus" the whole time. The only word in the song he can say really good is bible, so when I get to that part he yells it. I guess he will be yelling Thank ya Jesus soon!
Have you ever wondered if your baby misses you when your gone? Yes, he does. I went to a brunch for a few hours and when I got home he signed "miss" "you". Oh my, that was the sweetest sign ever. He use to just sign "love" "you" when we said it to him but now he will just come to us and sign "love" "you". I was holding a baby and he signed "love" and tried to crawl in my lap with us. He wanted to assure me that he loves me more than the baby does and please put her down right now, hehe! I wouldn't have known that he was feeling that way without signing. Signing creates a special bond because of moments like these when they can communicate their feelings.
I have seen such a huge connection with signing and literacy. Colby loves to play with his flashcards! I hold up the card and he shows me the sign. Signing stimulates all three types of learning; auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. It lays a great foundation for becoming a successful reader in a very natural way. Colby has never learned phonics but he can already read many words that he has seen on flashcards. He is learning to read while having fun! When Colby started to read these words, my husband grabbed the camera and filmed a few.
It's recommended to start signing with your baby at 6 months because that's when they can sit up, have a longer memory, and desire to communicate back. I started to sign to Colby at 3 months because I figured it never hurts to start early. He began to react to the sign eat, milk, and fan at just four months. I knew he wouldn't sign back for several months, but I also knew that he was learning. Around 5 or 6 months I thought Colby was trying to sign "eat" but I wasn't sure.
When Colby was 7 months old he woke up really early on a Saturday morning. Colby was use to me getting him up and then quickly nursing. Chris, my husband, was being sweet and giving me the option to get some extra sleep. When Chris picked up Colby he immediately signed "milk" because he wanted to nurse. Chris came into our bedroom and woke me up to tell me that Colby wants something he can't offer. I was so excited that he used his first sign! I realized that he was waiting until he felt like signing was necessary.
Over the next couple of months Colby used signs very sporadically and not very often. He reacted to many signs but still didn't sign frequently. At 10 months old, he had about 5 signs and I was wondering when he was going to use the tool we had given him to communicate with. Between 11 months and his 1st birthday he went from 5 signs to 25 signs. Ever since Colby realized he could sign to communicate his every want and need he continues to learn new signs daily.
Colby's signs and the order in which he produced the sign
10-12 months
milk
more
eat
fan
water
all done
cheese
banana
no
outside
bee
light
all gone
elephant
zebra
keys
cat
cheerios
potty
out
tree
ice-cream
baby
bath
sun
moon
dog
bye
apple
please
thank you
car
wind
bird
cold
change
up
fish
airplane
love
sorry
13 months- 41 signs
morning
again
pacifier
animal
cookie
KK (aunt)
14 months- 67 signs
help
umbrella
yes
poo poo
kiss
comb hair
bread
bike
flower
music
gorilla
daddy
mouse
kangaroo
telephone
pray
down
socks
dream
So, if you have been signing for awhile and your baby has yet to sign back;
don't give up
be consistent
and be very patient
IT WILL HAPPEN AND YOU WILL BE AMAZED!
I have so many great stories of Colby signing but the funniest is the bathtub situaton. Colby was playing in the bathtub (11 months old) and he got really still, looked at us, and then signed "out" "potty". When Chris lifted him up out of the water to put him on the potty he was beginning to take a poop. He tried to tell us but we weren't quick enough, at least some made it to the potty. We could not believe that he was putting two words together to try to get the point across.
Shocking Experience (14 months) Colby woke up one morning and we went to potty. He has a basket of flashcards by the potty that keep him entertained while trying to do his business. He loves for me to hold up the card and he shows me the sign. The airplane flash card was stuck under the potty and the only thing Colby could see was the word "airplane". He looked at me and signed "airplane". I almost flipped out but I didn't won't to get too excited if it was just a coincidence. I held the card up and covered the picture with my hand and asked Colby what the word was, and he signed "airplane". At this point I was freaking out! I grabbed another flashcard and covered up the picture and he signed "fan", he was correct. I was so overwhelmed with excitement that I had tears in my eyes. I called Chris, Mom, Dad, and my three bestfriends at 7:00 o'clock in the morning to tell them that my 14 month old can read words. He also read ice cream and baby. I'm not bragging that Colby is a little genius by any means, it's just the results of signing. We spend our days talking, signing, reading books, singing songs, drawing, looking at pictures, and playing. All these activities create a print rich environment that builds literacy skills. He has learned to associate a word to a particular picture. Think about how much easier that is than learning every sound of every letter and then trying to sound out a word, which doesn't work half of the time because our language is bizarre ( ex. night, phone, bar). You have to try to explain to a child that you can't sound out most words because the -gh might be silent or the -ph sounds like an F or you can't hear the -a sound because it has a controlling r. Seriously, and we wonder why kids get so confused at 5 years old.
Colby does not watch Your Baby Can Read because we don't allow him to watch TV, but I think they have great research on how important it is to take advantage of learning in the first three years of life.
Your Baby Can Read A baby’s brain thrives on stimulation and develops at a phenomenal pace…nearly 90% during the first five years of life! The best and easiest time to learn a language is during the infant and toddler years, when the brain is creating thousands of synapses every second – allowing a child to learn both the written word and spoken word simultaneously, and with much more ease. Dr. Titzer (creator of Your Baby Can Read) says the current practice of starting to teach reading skills in school is too late and children benefit greatly from getting a much earlier start since a child basically has only one natural window for learning language -- from about birth to about age four. During this period it is easier for a child to learn any type of language including spoken, receptive, foreign and written language. The earlier the child is taught to read the better they will read and the more likely they will enjoy it. Studies prove that the earlier a child learns to read, the better they perform in school and later in life. Early readers have more self-esteem and are more likely to stay in school. Meanwhile, a national panel of reading specialists and educators determined that most of the nation’s reading problems could be eliminated if children began reading earlier.
Can Colby read a book? No. Can he read a lot of words? No. Colby is just using his schema and experiences to become an emergent reader and it's a great start!
I am completley devoted to my Lord and Savior, my wonderful husband Chris and three little blessings! I love everything about Attachment Parenting! I support breastfeeding, babywearing, co-sleeping, & positive discipline!!
My family is attached at the heart and we live to enjoy the journey!
Waffle
yellow bus
Cat
He saw his first rainbow in the sky and he was signing to tell me.
