January 28, 2011
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Signing Time!
I want to be right up front and tell you that I’m not an advocate of teaching baby’s to use Sign Language. I know there are a lot of people out there that swear by it, but I’m not one of them, and I didn’t teach my babies to sign. I don’t believe that jamming them full of forced information is the way to introduce a child into the world, so I opted out of the flashcard-n-signing thing and used play as a way to bring about sound, loving development. I’m sure there are people who feel that’s wrong, but since it’s based on opinion, it’s moot.
But I do see great value in teaching people to sign – in order to communicate with people who have disabilities, in order to expand a knowledge base, and (here comes my survivalist side) in order to be able to wordlessly signal people in times of trouble, or when separated by distance. In other words, if you’re at an amusement park and want to signal that you’ll meet at the car at 5 o’clock… well, sign saves you a jog across from where you are. Just as an example.
Regardless of the reason, I do firmly believe that sign is a GREAT thing to teach your children, and I wanted to do it this year as a part of our schooling. So I went out and tried to find some sites that had basic signs and phrases for us to do – one a week on our bulletin board sounded like a good idea. And we already had a signing book for the manual alphabet, so we started with those, and made sure everyone knew how to sign their letters. Then we moved into ‘Thank you’, ‘Please’, ‘Good morning’, ‘How are you?’, ‘What’s your name?’, ‘My name is ___”… but frankly, I was having a hard time. It seemed like we were *learning* it, but not… I don’t know, integrating with it? Not sure that’s the word I want. It felt forced. Like what I saw those mothers doing to their babies, and that’s NOT how it has to be. I know it. I just had to find a way to make it fun and natural and easy.
Yesterday I went to the library to pick up a DVD on the pyramids (for our ‘Story of the World’ study). It was a National Geographic on who built the pyramids, how they were built, how the people lived, and how we uncover the history found around Giza today. But while I was looking for it on the library AV shelf, I saw a video called
‘Signing Time’… and I picked it up. It looked a little ‘Blues Clues’-y, but I thought it was worth a try.We took the video home, and watched it together, and WoW! My kids just LOVED it, and we learned a WHOLE bunch of signs, and had a good time doing it! So I thought, ‘hrm, there are more, I wonder if the library has any.’ Armed with a mission, I got on the internet library catalog, and come to find out, ‘Signing Times’ has two 13-video series! That’s a WHOLE SCHOOL YEAR’s worth of signing lessons! WooooooooT! So I looked into it, and – lucky me! – our district has ALL 26 videos between the branches. So I made a list of which branch had what, and we’re going to do a video a week… they don’t mind sitting down to watch it, it’s quick and fun and easy. And I even learned a lot. Not to mention, I don’t have to bust hiney trying to ‘reinvent the wheel’ to teach my kids – it’s all prepared, and FREE… as long as I utilize the public library!
Then I went further. I looked up ‘Signing Times’ on-line, to see if there was anything at the website that might be of interest. Low and behold, they have two .pdf documents (five pages, total) of the words the kids learn on the videos, so that they can check them off as they learn them (and we can review using the word lists!) WooooT, again! Perfect timing, because I was already debating how I would create word lists in order to drill the kids, so we didn’t forget what we’d already learned. *WHEW!* Another thing I don’t have to do!So… free Sign Language lessons, kid friendly, short, fun, and with free checklists to support the DVD materials. Who could ask for anything more? ((grins))
Comments (5)
Fun! There was a time when my sign language was on par with my spanish. My kid doesn’t want to learn spanish or sign language, he wants to learn hebrew.
The trouble with learning anything is that I might be good at getting my message across, but when someone with a bigger vocabulary comes along…I can’t understand them. You gotta have at least two people learning together, otherwise you never get to learn how to interpret. Maybe I should rent it for myself (and Danny)!
Cool – I need to check into that!
I used to know ASL – my dad worked for the Lighthouse for the Blind, and he had all of us learn…but now? Don’t remember. :sigh: Need to work on it…
Cool! Melissa Wiley – you will know her if you read the series about Laura Ingall’s grandmothers – has a son with disabilities and she highly recommends them for the same reasons.
My dil incorporates sign to my granddaughter without it being forced, no cards or videos. She just uses a basic sign when talking to her, for instance if its time to go to Grandma’s while she’s buckling her into her seat she’ll sing *go* when she gets to that word. There’s a few others & its very cool. I’m not with her enough to know if grandbaby uses it back but she does watch the signs closely and seems to. I guess its just something her (dil) mother did too.
That is awesome! I might check these out as we have also worked on signing, and now that oldest ds is filling out job apps and some of the questions are about knowing a second language such as Spanish, German, Italian and such, it would be good to be able to add sign language also. :dance:
Brian (who was sick and on the sofa) watched it, too, and even he liked it – he learned all sorts of signs, and I *NEVER* would’ve thought he’d even try something like ASL. So if that isn’t a testimonial as to how much we enjoyed the video…
((The one I got was Series II, Episode 5: Outside))