Bringing signing into your daily lives

As signing is still relatively new here in Singapore, I often get keen interest from parents, teachers from C's class (be it at her playgroup or the weekend gym classes we used to go to). One of the most common questions or should I say concerns is on sustainability.

"How do you bring signing into your daily lives and maintain that momentum?"

To be fair to the students from my signing classes, I will not be able to put everything down on this blogsite. But signing can be part of your lives through simple activities such as a walk in the park and signing to "trees", "leaves", "grass", "birds" to simple craft work which you can do with your toddler.

Additionally, you can also sign to books - I had great success with Eric Carle which had illustrations that were bright and colourful and the signing was to animals and colours which she has great interest in.

Further to that, I started bringing C for weekends accompanied classes before she was one and at that age, she was able to make sense of colours, texture, etc. Hence craft work was a big hit with her and truthfully, they are not that hard. All you need to do is to look for age appropriate ones but of course, bearing in mind that most of these craft need some sort of assistance and guidance from us.

One of the Baby Signing Time disc is on "outside" where it talks about the weather, etc. So when I taught C to sign for "Sun", we also did this craft together:

Here's some to share:

Signed to sun and introduced yellow

Signed to duck and water

Cate in action =)

Signed to fish, swim, water & blue

Private Workshop / Playgroup

Some of you have enquired a bit about the classes: what is signing about, how many sessions, etc., and what is the course like.

But pictures speak a thousand words so here are a few photos of a private playgroup we had. The first hour was a Mums and Tots yoga class and followed by a simple playgroup session with some toddlers under 2. With a class that has children that are approximately the same age, the playgroups/workshops can be further tailored where the signs chosen are more age appropriate and of interest.

In this instance, signs for animals were taught.

Signing classes are taught to the caregivers and parents. But in classes where their toddlers are brought along, there will be short signing activities done with the toddlers to get them involved. Here I was using hand puppets to reinforce some of the pet/animal signs I taught.

As a homeschooling mum, I am constantly looking for ideas and creative ways to further engage my child. Hence in my classes, I will not just be teaching the signs but also share tips and ideas on how to further incorporate signing into your life - walks in the parks, bringing the children to the zoo and doing activities there to reinforce the signs, etc.

This is the extra value that I bring to my classes which I believe are useful and fun for parents and the child.















Teaching the sign COW
















Using hand puppets to engage the tots


















Teaching CAT here and elborating on the "drawing" of the whiskers as a memory aid















Drawing on the child's natural sense of curiosity

If you have a group of friends who are keen on a private workshop / class, do email me at littlesigninghands@gmail.com and we can discuss more on what and how the class can be organised.