Sign language with hearing toddlers

[kiwimum]

Chloe's update, she is 16 months old

I've made another quick video of her reading progress as I want to show others on this forum just how sign language can really give you an early insight into all the words a child can know if exposed to early learning.

For some reason the sound played up for the first two shots and its really hard to her here say "mum" and "dad" but then the volume seems to work again.

She uses a mixture of NZSL and sometimes just makes the noise for some of the words eg animal words she will just make the animal noise if she cant say the actual word yet, but mum and dad understand what she means.

I recommend if you have any wooden block that you write word all over them. I'm always finding new games you can play with the blocks when there are word written all over them. First we wrote down words that I knew she knew how to read and sign, now I'm just writing any new word we introduce as I see her verbal skills increasing rapidly.

I'm pretty sure she can read more words than she can sign and I know she can sign more words than she can verbally say. The use of sign language alongside YBCR and Little Reader is excellent.

I defiantly notice that she need it to move fast when playing with words, if you are slow or not ready with the next game she will already be moving onto something else.


<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ki_NML9XsRM&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Ki_NML9XsRM&rel=1</a>

[Mom2Grace]

Congrats on the progress you have made so far! Our daughter had no language at 4.5 years of age when adopted. She started ASL immediately and when teaching the letters we started with the ASL letters plus sounds. Of course with other modes of learning she is now learning the names of the letters. ( tv and games) as mentioned in earlier posts we did use signing time and I've progressed to using ASL dictionaries to find words we didn't learn. In two years she has 350-400 words and can finger spell her name as well as a few words. I started adding in sight words by making a power point slide show of words she could sign and had her reading twenty words in a matter of months. ( she developed epilepsy over the summer and has lost some of her reding. I have started over and hope we will make steady progress beyond where we were) since our daughter has Down syndrome the speech skills are slower to develop just like you see in babies. I am so thankful for ASL , as you can read it has opened up the doors to communication and reading. I hope this helps. I would recommend adding signs and speech as you see fit, fast flashing is a good mode of learning to read as well. Since our daughter is visually impaired we have had more success with the power point slide shows with the screen being lit and large font. I hope to one day learn how to upload my power point slide shows for others to use.

[kiwimum]

Now at 18 months I think Chloe is having a verbal explosion. Its at least one new word every day and most of the words are coming out very clear. She even said her first three word sentence "no, dont go"
She still does a lot of signing and I want to keep this going with her as long as possible. She now mixes what she want to say with words and signs.
eg
There was a fly buzzing on the window so she signs "fly" and makes a buzz noise, then calls out our pet dogs name "Tui" then signs "eat" and makes the yum yum noise. Basic translation "Tui come eat the fly"
Lots of these little conversation happen all the time, I just love being able to communicate with her using sign language.
 
As for her reading, well I'm so impressed, now and again she just blows me away reading words that I know I have never taught her. First it started at 16 months with the words "nutmeg" then "countdown" and now more recently "mountain" and "paper". These moments mostly happen when I least expect them to, its more when she is ready to show me that she knows.  I just get so excited I just want to tell everyone what she is doing.
Thanks for listening forum family

oh if anyone is on facebook you can look up and "like" my page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NZ-Sign-for-Hearing-Toddlers/267768816665590

[baz]

well done Kiwimum!
I have a little hearing 'sign'er as well!
but everytime i ask my boy to 'say' something he just signs.. any tips to get the little one to speak and sign at the same time?
TIA

[kiwimum]

Just keep using your words with the signing and you cant go wrong. I think it will all just come flooding out when they are ready. Keep introducing new signs to keep it interesting and fun.

There have been lots of times when I have heard her say a word as clear as anything once or twice and then I ask her to use her words and she would just keep signing it. I think if she feels under pressure she bottles it up but when she is in a hurry, excited and isnt really trying it just comes out.
Take the pressure off and let the words fall out.



 

[baz]

thanks Kiwimum for the inspiration

[MarthaT]

We taught our little one a few different signs when she was younger, and it took a while for her to pick up, but eventually she did them.

[cinny]

Great video.
Initially, I was worried about teaching sign to my daughter (T21), but it has only increased her verbal language.  If she learns the sign to a new word she works on speaking it.  She is a very visual learner - that is part of the reason why LR has been great for her.

cinny

[kiwimum]

At 18 months I posted that my daughter was having a verbal explosion and new word were just flying out of her mouth each day. It was a mixture of signs and words. Now at 20 months old she is still signing a lot and talking and reading!!.

The other night while I was putting her to bed she pretty much read the first two pages of  'The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by herself. She did  find the little words hard eg "of, the, and" but said the bigger words beautifully. So the next morning I tried to capture the magic again on video (see the link below) but her voice is very quiet and a bit hard to hear, but you can still see her signing words eg warm, egg, caterpillar etc.

My challenge now is to keep the signing going and not let its completely drop off and be forgotten. I want to keep teaching her to finger spell the alphabet, I want to keep introducing New Zealand Sign Language into her tool box as a second language and I will keep trying to sign while reading books and I will keep posting here and let you know how we are getting on.

 http://youtu.be/soqk7ysJrrQ

[mario]

Thanks kiwimum.

Very interesting. My son is 18 months and I signed to him since he was born. Now he is talking and I always wonder when should I stop sign to him. It's very nice to read about your experience.

[mario]

I mean, your experience makes me feel more comfortable on keep signing 

[kiwimum]

mario- I'm glad you have found my posts interesting/helpful. If I was you I wouldn't stop signing, why stop?
As long as you are still talking while signing I think it can only be a positive experience for language development. Its just keeping up the desire to look up new useful sign and add them to your childs day that is the hard bit (that not even that hard, is it?)

I love that I can communicate to my daughter in a noisy room or at the swimming pool for example. All I need is her eye contact from across the room and with my hands I can ask her all kind of questions
"do you need the toilet?" "walk, dont run" "I'm watching you" "where is your sun hat?" "say please" "I love you" the list goes on. This will be helpful for years to come.

Its also really good when she is trying to tell me something but for the life of me I just cant work out what she is trying to verbally say. I just ask her to use some sign and she will then add sign to her verbal sentence and with those extra clues I am able to understand when she was wanting to tell me and then I can communicate back appropriately. If signing wasnt in our life during these moment I could see how a toddler would get frustrated and have tantrums from not being understood. Chloe hardly ever has a toddler tantrum and I have sign language to thank for that.

Recently we have been having a but of success with finger spell the alphabet, together we can almost get from A-P finger spelling. I mostly refer to the letters by their letter sounds as this is more helpful for her vocabulary also. I'm also encouraging her to learn to use her fingers to count to ten. 
There is just so much you can do, its endless.

[mario]

That's great to hear kiwimun. How is your experience with negative opinions? Do you have people in you family against the way you communicate with your child?

[kiwimum]

I have had more than a few negative opinions given to me, a few have really shocked me. It amazes me how strong peoples opinions can be on topics they actually don't really know anything about.

Early on before I knew for myself that SL was going to actually work, the negative opinions did make me doubt my decision and made me feel like maybe I could be doing more harm than good.
I didn't know anyone personally who had tried baby sign language so I did feel quite alone and vulnerable at times (I'm so glad I found this forum to ask questions and share success stories with).

I also think that maybe some felt a bit of guilt that they never did this with their child or maybe they just actually didnt care, I dont know.

For awhile there I wanted to spread the word about Baby Sign Language by running parent night classes but the thought of having to defend off negative comment and opinions just make me feel tired and frustrated. Maybe I might think about doing workshops again in the future maybe not. But I know when number two child comes along, I will start signing from birth and I will be more confident in my journey. I'm looking forward to it.

[mario]

This is amazing kiwimum

As you can see in my signature, I have a Brazilian website for Baby Signing. The woman in the video is my wife.

At first I was unsure about signing in public. But now I'm not since I speak to my son in foreign language, signing seems to be an easy thing to do and I really don't mind.

From my family I have only few people against it. There was some people against it in the school my son was attending last year.

I also have this feeling you said. Some people may be against because they didn't do this. I think everyone who is a father or mother doesn't want to see himsel/herself as bad parent and thus, if someone comes with something new or something they didn't want to try, they take a counter-side.

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