Baby Sign Language Basics: Early Communication for Hearing Babies and Toddlers, New & Expanded Edition [Paperback]

Monta Z. Briant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2009

Since 2004, Baby Sign Language Basics has introduced hundreds of thousands of families and educators around the world to the miracle of signing with their babies—and left them wanting more!

Now in this new, bigger edition, Monta Briant provides more than 300 American Sign Language (ASL) signs, illustrated with the same clear, easy-to-understand photos and descriptions. Baby-specific signing techniques, songs, and games are also included to make learning fun and open up two-way communication quickly.

This book is a must-read for all parents, grandparents, and anyone else who spends time with preverbal children. After all, what parent or caregiver doesn’t want to know what their baby is trying to tell them?

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Monta Briant first discovered baby sign language when she was expecting her first child. She began signing with her daughter, Sirena, when she was 6 months old, and was so impressed with the results that she felt compelled to share what her family had learned with other parents and caregivers of young children.

Monta offers classes, workshops, and storytimes throughout San Diego County. Her Baby Sign Language Basics series of products includes everything parents need for signing success, including several books, an instructional DVD, flash cards, and the Songs for Little Hands Music CD and Activity Guide.

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Hay House; Expanded edition (January 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401921604
• ISBN-13: 978-1401921606
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Instruction > Sign Language

More About the Author

Monta Zelinsky Briant, a 7th generation native of San Francisco, moved to San Diego in 1998 with husband Paul Briant (of Cape Town, South Africa) in order to find more affordable housing, more sunshine, and start a family.

In 2000, Monta and Paul welcomed their first child, Sirena, into the world, and soon began signing with her. Signing with Sirena was such and amazing experience for Zelinsky-Briant family, that Monta felt compelled to share signing with other families, and began teaching classes in 2001. The classes eventually caught the attention of Hay House Publishing, and Monta's first book, Baby Sign Language Basics: Early Communication for Hearing Babies and Toddlers (Hay House 2004), quickly became the best-selling book on the topic, being published in a half dozen foreign language editions as well. In 2004, when the family welcomed a little brother, Aiden, to the family, big sister Sirena was a big help teaching her new brother signs!

Both children have outgrown signing as a primary means of communication, but they still remember most of their signs, and continue to find them useful in a variety of situations. Nowadays, Monta get's her baby-signing-fix with the little signers in her classes. "It always seems like a miracle every time a tiny baby does a new sign in class-- even though I've seen it thousands of times now, I get just as excited as the parents do!" says Monta. "I always walk out of every class I teach absolutely walking on air-- it's the most fulfilling job in the world".

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Learning Tool, May 25, 2009

By 

Bootsie "Bootsie" (Grass Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Baby Sign Language Basics: Early Communication for Hearing Babies and Toddlers, New & Expanded Edition (Paperback)

This is a pretty thorough book. I bought two books on baby signing and a set of flash cards and this one book would have been plenty. There were reviews that said complained about the size, but I think it is perfect. The size makes it convenient. Pictures are good. Like it quite a bit.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Resource!, May 9, 2009

By 

Susan K. Edwards "SusieKE" (Vancouver, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Baby Sign Language Basics: Early Communication for Hearing Babies and Toddlers, New & Expanded Edition (Paperback)

I purchased this book for our daughter to help our granddaughter out prior to her ability to talk. I cannot tell you how much signing lessened our granddaughter's frustration. She has been able to "talk" to us by signing and get her point across ... I will admit our granddaughter is not known for a lot of patience so this book has helped ALL of us out! Where my daughter knew the basic signing from attempting to teach her son (almost 8 years prior) some of the basics ... our granddaughter's lack of patience and our son-in-law's and daughter's consistency in signing was a tremendous help in lessening the frustration that our granddaughter would have felt. This book is so easy to follow it was a tremendous help on the signs that were not remembered by our daughter. I have to admit I was a bit concerned as I had read a few reviews in other places where signing slowed down the speaking of words ... in our granddaughter's case that was definitely NOT SO ... as she learned both at a very young age. And now that our granddaughter is speaking, as well as, signing we are so very impressed with how fast she is learning to do both at such a very young age and how fast her vocabulary is increasing! By the way this is NOT our very first grandchild that we would be impressed with ... as we are very proud grandparents of 5 grandchildren with the 6th one due any day now!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exactly what I was looking for, October 11, 2010

By 

NYC Consumer (NY, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Baby Sign Language Basics: Early Communication for Hearing Babies and Toddlers, New & Expanded Edition (Paperback)

I was a little overwhelmed at the number of books on this topic when I was reading reviews. All I wanted was an easy to understand, easy to follow book that explained the basics of how to teach my baby to sign (how to start and what order to introduce the signs). This one is perfect for me. It has enough signs to make it worthwhile but not too many to be overwhelming and it seems to have all of the basic ones that I am interested in teaching my baby. It also has a good intro and easy to understand diagrams of the signs with a writeup on most to explain the sign. I have a more comprehensive book that I find very difficult to use because the pictured do not make sense to me (I see the picture but cannot really figure out how to do the actual sign). I also like the pocket size of the book, don't get me wrong , it's too thick to fit in your pocket but it's a nice compact size.