Remember, Every Baby is Unique

Besides age (the younger the baby, the longer before the first sign), your baby’s unique temperament and personality will make a big difference in how quickly she learns to sign. This is an important point because parents are often so concerned about the speed of their own child’s development relative to other children that they miss the magic of the unfolding of their child’s unique time line of accomplishment.

One way babies’ temperaments and personalities affect development is their role in inspiring babies to set priorities for development. For some babies, communication is a top concern, and anything, including signs, that enables them to connect with other people is placed high on their to-do list. For other babies, motor milestones are more intriguing and take center stage. We can’t tell you how many parents have told us that their baby seemed uninterested—or temporarily lost interest—in signing until he or she conquered the challenge of learning to walk or climb.

This certainly was the case with my son, Kai (who is pictured in the photos above, first as a signing baby and now as a handsome 24-year-old!). Despite lots and lots of modeling of signs, Kai didn’t begin signing until his first birthday—two weeks after he was finally able to toddle around on his own. After that, it was off to the races in both domains!

So, just be patient and keep modeling signs. In doing so, you will be providing your baby interesting food for thought no matter how long it takes him to produce signs himself.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

ABC Sign with Me!

The latest in our Baby Signs created series of On the Grow™ classes for children Birth to 6 is designed to introduce parents and children to the ASL signs for the letters of the alphabet through fun songs, games, and craft projects. (These classes are offered by a subset of our Baby Signs Instructors. See list in your area under Find a Class.)

Why learn the ASL alphabet? Basically, anything that makes learning about the alphabet fun automatically promotes literacy—and learning the letter signs does just that. Children think it’s fun! And while they are having fun, we are “sneaking in” some important information that is absolutely critical to learning to read. Here are just a few of the ways that signing the alphabet helps lay a strong foundation for literacy.

• Many of the hand shapes roughly resemble the letters they stand for, thereby helping children strengthen the association between the letter names and the visual forms of the letters.

• Learning separate hand shapes for individual letters helps clarify for children what the letter names actually stand for—for example, that “du-bul-you” is actually one, not three letters and the “emeno” is actually three letters (M,N,O) not one!

• Learning the letter signs leads naturally to “fingerspelling” of simple words which, in turn, provides visual evidence that words are made up of separate sounds. For example, simply saying the word “cat” blends all the sounds together, making it hard for children to understand that it’s actually a sequence of three sounds: “cah + ah + ta”. Having separate hand signs for each sound makes it easier for children to grasp this critical notion.

So, if you’re interested in helping you and child learn the ASL alphabet while having a great time with other families, check out the Baby Signs website to find an On the Grow™ Educator near you!

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

"Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers"

I'm sure all of you are aware of how reading books to babies from very early ages is important for fostering literacy(as Julie is doing here at two ages with my grandbabies, Olivia and Nate), but here's another useful tip.

I’m hoping some of you recognize the title of this post as a classic “Tongue Twister,” one among a set of old favorites that also includes “She sells sea shells by the sea shore” and “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” I’m betting, though, that few of you have given thought to how these tricky mouthfuls actually aid kids in learning to read.

Here’s how. The way a phrase qualifies as a tongue twister is by including a series of words that all emphasize the same sound, for example, the sound of the letter “B” in the case of the baby buggy phrase. The beauty of these fun phrases is that they “sneak in” lessons about what reading teachers call “phonemic awareness”—the simple recognition that words, although when heard may sound like a single sound, are actually made up of separate sounds. The example I used in an earlier blog post where I talked about rhyming was the word “cat” which is actually made up of the separate sounds “C+A+T. Because the job of letters is to represent these separate sounds, being able to recognize that words are divisible in this way is obviously an important component of learning to read.

It makes sense, then, that anything that increases a child’s attention to the sounds at the beginning or within words—like Tongue Twisters do--indirectly helps increase phonemic awareness and, therefore, helps lay an important foundation for reading.

So, “Turn your toddler’s tongue to tricky twisting” and before you know it, she’ll be a “really rapid reader reading written words!”

Happy Signing (and don't forget to follow us on Facebook),

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, The Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

How Rhyming Aids Reading

Here at Baby Signs, we know that there’s more to helping children prosper than just teaching them to sign. That’s why we developed a set of classes for children from Birth to age 6 called “On the Grow™” classes (check them out at www.babysigns.com). It was while I was working of the curriculum for the latest one of these where we teach parents and children the ASL signs for the alphabet (“ABC Sign with Me!) that it occurred to me that this blog might be a good place to share a few fun tips about helping children learn to read.

Preparation for learning to read can, and in fact should, start very early. One pre-reading skill that’s easy and fun to work on is “Phonemic Awareness.” What this fancy term refers to is the simple recognition that words are made up of separate sounds—for example, the word “cat” is made up of the separate sounds “Ca + Aa + Ta. Because the job of letters is to represent these separate sounds, being able to recognize that words are divisible in this way is obviously an important component of learning to read.

Well, an easy and fun way to help children develop phonemic awareness is to introduce them to lots of nursery rhymes and simple poems. Here’s why. Words rhyme precisely because they share their ending sounds but not their beginning sounds and poems help make these words and their sound similarities and differences stand out so children are more likely to notice. Listen to this old classic:

Humpty, Dumpty sat on the WALL
Humpty, Dumpty had a great FALL
All the king’s horses and all the kings MEN
Couldn’t put humpty together AGAIN.

Research from the University of Oxford in England actually found that 3-year-olds who knew lots of nursery rhymes were more advanced in phonemic awareness than those children who did not—and therefore were on the road to reading at an accelerated pace.

So dust off your copies of Mother Goose and give it a go. You’ll not only be having fun, but also helping your child develop a critical ingredient necessary for learning to read.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to visit us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, PhD.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC