Flower =
sniffle
There are so many signing pages in English so I only want to point to our
Pittsburgh activities.
If you never heard of using sign language with hearing infants before they
can speak, please watch the
VIDEO ©
copyrighted by sign with your baby ®
Using easy to learn or alterated ASL (American Sign Language) for communication
purposes in early infanthood has proven to be enhancing IQ scores, alleviate
frustration, and open a window into the mind of your preverbal
baby.
Our daughter Lena is using about 14 signs at the age of 13
months.
She is 14 months old now
and uses 20 babysigns, the latest she learned are: water, shoes, ball, finished,
open, grasshopper,
duck, on
this photo she signes "book"
Here in the Pittsburgh area I used to offer music and sign language meetings
for parents and their babies to bring music and communication
to families of children aged 8-20 months. This "class" offered
sign language instruction reinforced through music and songs to aid in language
acquisition for the babies and communication among family members; various
american and european studies show the benefits of such instruction
on IQ, vocabulary development, reading skills, spatial reasoning skills,
and more.
For more information, call
+49 2151 6444798
or send
an e-mail
It is a great fun and
educational time for babies and
parents!
Picture to your right: Lena signs "eat, or I am hungry"
Lena is now 18 mth old and uses 43 signs. She already tries to speak and
says around 5 recognisable words. She learns German and English at the same
time and for a bilingual baby it is helpful to have signs which connect
the two languages.
Excerpt from an article by Marilyn Daniels :
Sign language in general seems tailor-made for young children. "The motor
areas of the body mature sooner than the mouth and other language
articulators," says Dr Daniels. This means that it is easier for children
to learn and remember signs than it is for them to acquire fluency in either
spoken or written language. "Children like to use sign," she adds. "They
pay more attention because of the movement; they become more involved. They
are involved in the process of learning and interested in it."
For parents and teachers concerned with the education of hearing children,
Dr Daniels' research is most significant because it shows that using sign
language from infancy through sixth grade results in improved literacy. The
children she has worked with demonstrate better recognition of letters and
sounds, better spelling, and larger English-language vocabularies than
children who were not taught sign language.
Lena says/signs
finished!
I found something very interesting by a nobel prize winner about learning
in an online magazine:
EDITOR: Winning a Nobel Prize is an incredible achievement! What advice can
you give parents who wish to help their children create a "Nobel" worthy
future?
Carl WEIMAN: Not being a parent myself, I am very wary of offering advice
on the enormously complicated task of raising a child. I stick to much easier
jobs, like doing physics! However, there is some advice that I recently gave
to students entering college, and perhaps it might have some relevance
here.
1. Work hard and learn as much as you can. There is never going to be enough
time in life to do everything you will want to.
2. Take responsibility for your learning. Very soon after you finish college
there is no class or grade that will matter, but what will always matter
is your ability and desire to learn new things. Keep that principle in mind
as you go through your education and learn because something is worth knowing,
not because it satisfies some official requirement or will get you a good
grade.
Article on BBC News :
How
babysigning helps communication
Another very interesting article is about signing chimpanzees. Taken
into consideration that chimpanzees can only use their tongue and mouth to
produce screeming sounds and therefore cannot learn the human language, some
scientists taught them how to use ASL American Sign Language
Whatever happened
to Washoe?
Thank you for your interest.
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