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.

common questions

I wanted to touch on and share my views on some of the common questions that I get regarding signing.

As an instructor, I get a lot of questions on why sign?

To which, my answer would be "why not"? The benefits of signing are tremendous: studies have suggested that it aids in speech development and are also thought to increase IQ. But to me, one of the most important things is that it is a way to communicate with your child. Why wait till 12 months or 18 months before they can speak a bit to tell you what they want? Truly, why wait?

Why not allow your child and you an avenue where the child is able to tell you what he likes before he masters the verbal ability to speak? If he wants milk or prefers to have juice instead of water or if he wants to go down for a walk again to see the birds up in the trees. Imagine if you had gone for a walk with your child 2 days before and he is fussing. You would have no way to knowing that all he really wants is to head down and see the birds again since a lot of things can have would have happened over 48 hours. How else is your child able to tell you what he wants if he is not able to verbalise it yet? (That by the way, was a personal experience with my daughter - she wanted to head down to see snail after seeing that it has rained and the snails would be out.)

Of course, there is also the other concern about speech development which I have already shared my thoughts on in one of my earlier posts.

In addition, what about bonding? Do not underestimate how much your child can and may want to share with you. I remembered having dinner with my in-laws and my daughter was giggling away suddenly. I asked her why she was laughing and she signed to me "glasses". I turned and I saw a man who just entered the restaurant in a crazy pair of glasses - bright orange thick plastic frames with really loud designs on it and it did look funny. I started laughing as well . To have such an understanding and bond with my child, was indeed priceless. She was perhaps only 13 - 14 months old then.

Another common question that I get is if results are guaranteed where after the course, how soon is my child able to sign back.

Let me first share that the course is meant for the adults -parents, caregivers, etc. So that you can learn the signs and teach them to your child. Hence, how soon a child is able to sign back really depends on a lot of factors, of which one is how consistent you are.

Other factors would include the child's age (since they may not have the motor skills to master some signs yet), the child's personality, etc. Remember that each child is uniquely different - if each pregnancy is a different experience then we should expect her to progress differently from his siblings and friends.

The important thing is sign sign sign away and your child will sign back as she makes the association. Sign language is like any other languages out there - it is a 'live' language. It evolves and the more we use it, the better we get at it. So the key here is to practice practice practice.

This then leads to another question: does it require a lot of work to teach my child to sign? It must be hard.

Personally, I do not find it hard and for a few of my signing friends, the response is also similar. This is because at one time, we usually teach / expose to the child a few selected signs. So, it would be repeated. And if I can borrow an example from the book Baby Signs, when we wave bye bye to our child, do we ever go "ok, here we go again, lets put our bags down and make that concerted effort and sign bye and wave?"

Similarly, that 4 - 5 signs each time will come to you as naturally as that.

Lastly, with older children or children who have already started to speak, I get the question, why sign when they are already starting to speak?

In cases of young children, they may be able to speak smaller shorter words but for longer words, they may still be unable to speak them. Hence, signing enables and empowers them to express and communicate their thoughts. I believe many parents have also read that during early years, the more stimulation is given to young children, the more connections and synapses are formed which, of course, are important for brain development. With signing to hearing children, the child is being exposed to a multi sensory approach - Bodily-Kinesthetic, Spatial and Linguistic. And if you were to be using additional home materials such as Baby Signing Time or Signing Time DVDs, your child will be also able to learn through Musical and Naturalist intelligences in addition to the three mentioned above.

I recently went to the Zoo with my daughter and prior to going, I showed her a Signing Time DVD and taught her the signs of many animals. She had a field day! And when the word of the animal was too large for her, she'd sign to me. What I would then do is to teach her how to pronounce / say the word slowly. This I believe, aids in helping her say the word.

And oh, the look on her face when she saw giraffe and zebra in the flesh for the first time, was another priceless moment.

Here's a clip to share of her signing to some simple words when I held up a board book for her - note how she chooses to say the words instead of signing them to me. This is to share that once the child is comfortable with speaking, they may choose to use that to communicate instead of signing. Signing does not replace speaking.

1st Baby Signing Time Instructor in Singapore!!!

YAY!!! I am extremely excited to share that after being a fan of the award winning Baby Signing Time and Signing Time DVD series from US and sacrificing many hours of sleep to practice and study for the course, I am officially a Baby Signing Time Instructor!!!

Not only that, I am the FIRST instructor in Singapore to be accredited by the Signing Time Academy!!!

What this means is that I am now able to teach according to the Baby Signing Time series which has won the hearts thousands and thousands of fans around the world!

I first chanced upon this award winning series at a local Baby Fair when I was waiting for my husband. I was bored and had to shop a little (yes, I am a shoppaholic)! I was already reading up and learning about signing to my child and did not know that such resources were available for signing mums such as myself. I read the brief description on the cover and thought "why not?"

Within 5 mins of watching Disc 1, my baby and I were hooked! The discs use song, sign and sing approach and were fun, catchy, educational and best of all, totally engaging! Fast forward to a year on, my daughter and I are still enjoying the production and we have moved onto Signing Time series which has a total of 13 discs each series (there are 2 so far).

Here's a sneak preview of what she picked up as "playtime" and "first signs" from the Baby Signing Time Award series.

I will share more information on the class contents, etc. in the next few blog updates. As part of the classes offering, I will be selling both Baby Signing Time and Signing Time DVD series and other items such as Board Books, Flashcards, etc. too.

Please email me for more information.

Here she is signing "Cold" to a flashcard which shows Ice @11months. To me, that was useful as she is able to identify what Cold was and could communicate to us say at a restaurant where the air conditioning may be cold for her

Here she is signing "cry" when a neighbour's child who lives above us cried

Signing to "Slide" - I asked her what she wanted to play and she told me "slide". This is an approximate sign as at this age, their motor skills are still developing

Signing to "Cat"

And the full profile of my little cat! =)

Happy Signing!

Teacher Helps Babies Get Early Start With Language

One of the most common questions that I get is if the child will use sign language forever and not speak or that their speech will be drastically delayed.

Incidentally, one of the questions I asked was "Have you ever met a baby who signed Bye Bye" forever and not say / speak goodbye at all?

Then I chanced upon this interview that Rachel Coleman, one of the co-creators of the award winning series Signing Time, did with a TV News Channel and lo and behold, she used the same example! In this interview, one of the news anchor also shared his personal positive experience with signing to his kid. JTS

Signing to a rhyme

Here's a clip of my 18 month daughter signing and piping in to a simple rhyme. Some of the signs are ASL and some are not.

It is meant to share is that kids learn best through play; in this instance the actions and signs + the simple sound of the rhyme engages and enables her to remember the words in a fun way.

how it all started...

Shortly after I had my daughter (she is my first born and so far my only child), I suffered from post natal depression. I remembered a despondent feeling and somehow feeling no sense of closeness and attachment to her. I recalled wondering if that was what parenthood was about and if that's all to it?

I subsequently got better and went back to work after 3.5 months of maternity break and within around a month of my return, I was retrenched due to the financial crisis last year. I was once again at home and somehow I was still not feeling that "wonderful love at first sight" bonding and gush of immediate love that everyone was talking about.

A friend and one of the few persons that I know that is so beautiful inside and out and one whom has been there for me on numerous occasions (that's you Bern!) suggested for me to try baby signing. 'Baby signing?' I remembered thinking to myself. I recalled reading about it many years ago in an UK Parenting magazine and then thought, "why not, sounds like fun?"

That started an incredibly beautiful and wonderful journey for both my daughter and I. I started to understand better and started actually having fun and enjoying her a lot more. Till this day, I am just amazed at how far we have both travelled, how much we bonded and are still bonding, and how much she wants to communicate with me. My daughter is currently 18 months old and is a very vocal little person. She produced her first sign around 6 - 7 months and from then on, it went from a new sign a week to a few every week and now that she is older, she picks up a few new signs everyday.

One of the common questions I am asked a lot is 'wouldn't signing delay speech?' To which, according to studies and books, research suggests otherwise where it has been said to aid speech development. From my personal experience, that seems to be true for my daughter - she now is able to string words together to form short phrases - instead of gesturing to me and say "sit" when she wants me to sit down, she now says "mimi, sit down"; instead of just pointing to a chair and say "chair", she now tells me "that red chair". Many of my friends have commented how advanced her speech is and even asks me how many words she speaks. I did not keep count when she passed the 150 words mark. These are words that she is able to speak clearly and does not include words she signs but cannot speak as yet such as "animals", "hippopotamus", etc.

Many of these words that she knows, understands and verbalises are introduced to her via signing. This is because most babies' first words are nouns and baby signing reinforces that. Also, I believe that a signing parent / caregiver tends to talk more to a baby than a non-signing one as conscientious effort is put into associating the item and the sign and the sound of the word. For e.g. many parents would start off by teaching the sign and the word milk. How I taught my daughter that word and sign was to sign the word everytime I bring the milk to her. Hence at every milk feed, I would have signed and said the word at least 5 times - 'baby, would you like some milk?' 'Yes, milk tastes so good!', etc.

Everytime the item and / or sign is shown, the word is being said. I also recalled reading that a baby needs to hear the word a minimum of 500 times before they are able to verbalise the word. With signing, the words are repeated many times so perhaps thats how it aids in speech development.

As I am a full time working mum, I have a helper to take care of my daughter when I am at work. My helper has also embarked on the signing journey and is able to communicate very well with my daughter too.

Thats how and why I started this blog - to share my personal experience with signing and teach it. I hope that more people will take this on as there are so many benefits to signing with your child. I sincerely believe that you and your child will have as much fun as I did and do, everyday. For my child never fails to bring a smile to my face after I knock off from work every evening and listening to her share and sign to me her perceptions of her little world.

Happy signing!