Looking to make signing with your hearing baby or toddler simple, fun, and successful from the very first day? Signing Smart makes it easy! With our research-proven strategies and techniques, there's no need to sign with your infant or toddler every time you say a word! Our materials and programs use American Sign Language (ASL) signs and teach you when and how to sign most effectively, and which signs to use within routines and play. When you teach your baby signs using Signing Smart strategies, you open the door to early communication, facilitated speech, increased intimacy, and long-term learning!
Beginner Play Class Series: Early Communication
The Signing Smart Beginner Play Class Series provides a playful environment where parents or caregivers and their hearing children learn ASL signs and research-proven Signing Smart Strategies while playing and interacting. Activities include gross motor play, large and small group interactions, reading, singing, and much more! The classes are great for families new to signing with their babies as well as for those who have already started. Come enjoy fun and engaging developmentally-based activities that foster intimacy and communication between babies and toddlers and their parents. More than simply teaching "routine" signs, the classes are full of both useful signs as well as ones that are most motivating to your child.
Activities are structured to facilitate both linguistic and cognitive development, building up children's conceptual understanding, memory, and vocabulary. You will learn the Signing Smart Start as well as how many and which signs to use throughout your signing journey. You will also learn Signing Smart Interaction Strategies, how to bring signs into your child's world, and how to recognize and respond to your child's early signs, making signing simple, fun, and successful. To top it off, you will learn relevant developmental information related to sign, word, cognitive, and emotional development-all while playing and interacting!
Why sign with hearing babies and toddlers?
While all hearing children begin the journey toward spoken language development at birth, it takes children between 12 to 24 months to begin "mastering" the sound and intonation patterns of English, and then to begin applying this mastery to the production of basic words and sentences. In contrast, Signing Smart gives you the resources and knowledge to take advantage of natural movements that all children make. And because the gross motor abilities required for signing develop months, sometimes years, earlier than the equivalent fine motor skills required for speech, children can begin to sign very early in development. Therefore, at the same time that infants and toddlers are learning and practicing the sound patterns for English, they can use linguistic hand and body movements to communicate needs, ideas, and thoughts from as early as five months.
Older infants and toddlers who have "mastered" early words will still benefit from seeing and using signs, and their parents or caregivers benefit too. For example, early "talkers" can use signs to expand their vocabulary - commenting, questioning, and conversing using signs for words that they cannot yet say, or coupled with words they are learning to say to make sentences.
Children's use of signs can help clarify their speech, and parents or caregivers can specifically ask their child to use a sign to help them better understand and respond to their child's words.
When parents or caregivers continue to use signs in strategic ways, such as those taught in Signing Smart programs and materials, the signs highlight specific concepts or ideas, and help children differentiate between similarly sounding words. Even older toddlers and preschoolers benefit when parents use signs and Signing Smart strategies to support cognitive development and learning. For example, literally seeing the difference between words like FLEA and FLEE allows young children to more easily learn concepts and complex vocabulary, regardless of the great many words they may already have at their command.
Why use Signing Smart materials or programming?
While of course you may choose to begin signing with your baby by learning a handful of signs from an ASL dictionary, there are many compelling reasons to use a proven plan and a set of strategies to allow signing with your infant or toddler to be something you integrate into your life, as opposed to something that takes over it! While many baby / toddler sign language companies stress the importance of being consistent and signing whenever you say the word, or starting with only a few specific signs and getting your child to look at you as you produce them, our research has proven there is an easier, more successful way!
By implementing the Signing Smart Start and learning the four simple Keys to Signing Smart Success (including ways to sign without your child ever needing to look directly at you!), you and your family can experience success in a matter of days or weeks, as opposed to needing to wait months! Signing Smart is not about learning a whole new language or needing to "get" your baby to produce complex hand movements. It's about enriching what you are already doing with your baby by learning a selection of useful and interesting signs, verified shortcuts that will allow you to take advantage of the flexibility of a natural language like ASL, and why and how your child's signs (like his early words) will be slightly different from yours. In addition, our tools and strategies will allow your child to develop an extensive sign vocabulary quickly, and they include many tried-and-true techniques to use signs to facilitate spoken language development and concept learning.
Signing Smart is a research-proven approach developed by two Ph.D.s in Developmental Psychology who have years of experience signing with their own children, as well as with the thousands of families that have been a part of Signing Smart programs. All programming and materials were created to work with what Drs. Michelle Anthony and Reyna Lindert know about children's development, and allow you easy-to-learn techniques that take advantage of their years of training and research.
National Study of Signing Smart Children
Drs. Anthony and Lindert have just completed a groundbreaking study on the benefits of Signing Smart methods in relation to early communication as well as spoken language development. They are in the process of formally writing up the results for publication in academic journals and presentation at professional conferences.
The study consists of more than 200 families from all over the country whose children range from 6 months to 19 months, and it includes both cross-sectional as well as longitudinal data. All families participating in the study used Signing Smart programming (through our workshops, play classes, or materials) for at least 8 weeks. Data were collected over a span of about 9 months.
Results:
Compared to developmental norms, Signing Smart children have enriched language and communication skills:
*While the average 8 month old will have no spoken words, the average Signing Smart child will have 5 signs and 1 word.
*While the average 12 month old will have 3-5 spoken words, the average Signing Smart child will have 25 signs and 16 words
*At 18 months, the average child will have 10-50 spoken words. In contrast, the average Signing Smart child will have 79 signs and 105 words.
*In addition, a majority of Signing Smart children begin combining signs and words or signs and signs together to form little sentences at 11-14 months. Compare this to non-signers, who do not begin to combine words into short sentences (e.g., "Da-da car") until 20 months old on average!
These results indicate that ASL signs, used in combination with Signing Smart strategies, facilitate both overall communicative abilities as well as spoken language skills in hearing infants and toddlers.
Click Here for More Information about the Signing Smart TM program!
You will be amazed at all your child has to say!