Customer Reviews

My Baby Can Talk - First Signs

5 star:		(171)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I am an experienced signing parent, having signed with my second son and am currently signing with my 20-month-old daughter. I have seen many signing videos over the last four years, both as a parent and as a professional in the baby signing industry. Upon viewing My Baby Can Talk™ - First Signs DVD for the first time, I was very impressed for a number of reasons.

For starters, the movie itself is extremely engaging. I have my own little group of testers here in the house (three children) and I gauged their reactions carefully. My little girl, the youngest at 20 months, watched it the whole way through the first time with me by her side. She was able to connect the signs with the images on the screen quite easily with a little help from mom and genuinely enjoyed the footage of the animals the best (the panda having a snack is her favorite). I have not seen my daughter love a movie as much as she loves this one. She wants to watch it every day.

I also thought that it is really great to show both an adult as well as a baby signing every sign. This is helpful in more than one way - children get to see another child in their age group signing and they also get to see the sign signed with more precision by an adult. The repetition in the movie is perfect as well as the variety of images shown. It really reinforces the sign.

Love the classical music score, love the images, love the variety of signs ... all in all, 5 stars!

After reading many of the reviews for this DVD, I've seen a lot of people commenting on the lack of certain words like "please", "thank you", etc. I would like to point out that this video is designed for infants and young toddlers -- their first words are almost always nouns..."doggie", "kitty", and THINGS in their world that they like. Introducing the concept of signing please & thank you at this age is inappropriate. Any parent who is hard-of-hearing or has experience signing to their child will tell you that they learn signs for THINGS (nouns)first. I have been learning & using ASL since I was a teenager, and my daughters have been signed to since birth...in complete concepts (sentences)...and their first signs were "dog" and "fish" because those were the things they liked. One of my girls is JUST NOW getting the concept, at 18 months, that the sign "please" has something to do with wanting something. In summary, just enjoy teaching your infant nouns and basic wants ("more")...and leave "please" & "thank you" for when they are ready to understand it. :-)

I have many different sign language DVD's for babies and have to say that this is not one of my favourites, though it is a cute little DVD.

PROS:
-It is wonderful to see the baby doing the signs. It is so important for parents to see what signs look like on little hands so they know what to look for from their own baby.
-It uses ASL signs - ASL signs are not too difficult for babies and have so many benefits to using them over using made up signs like "Baby Signs" uses in their videos.

CONS:
-Many of the ASL signs used in this video are ones I rarely see used. In ASL there are some variations of signs used that will differ regionally, but this video seems to pick ones for some of the signs on the video that I haven't seen used on any other DVD or in any ASL dictionary I have.
-The woman who does the signs has little to no facial expression when signing. Just the same smile throughout. Even with babies I think using facial expression when signing is so important to them understanding the meaning behind many of the signs. ASL is a lively language so I wish the instructor livened it up a bit and was more expressive.
-This DVD just didn't keep my own children's or my daycare children's attention for long at all. About the only thing that really caught their attention on this video was the little SHOE ditty.

If you are looking for a DVD for babies 6-36 mths. I highly recommend The Treasure Chest: Toys and Signs. If you are looking for a great DVD series for children 18-24 mths. and up I would highly recommend the Signing Time series.

My daughter started to watch this video when she was 10 months old. Within just two viewings, she was signing back to us her first sign. We were thrilled. We love that the video contains a lot of animals, because in everyday life she encounters many animals, especially in all the books we read together. She really enjoys signing the various animals as we turn the pages. By 12 months she was signing everything in the video back to us, and now at 16 months, she signs and speaks all the words in the video. We love that the video is so well produced. The music, and video quality is A+, and really captures our daughter's attention. She will sit and watch the entire video (gives mom a chance to fold a load of laundry or take a shower!). My husband and I took a few signing classes and got a signing book, but we found it difficult to remember to use the signs in everyday life. But since the first viewing, our daughter looks to our hands for signs when we are talking. She is really eager to learn more and more signs, so in turn, we have dusted off the book and been to websites to find more and more as she really has learned to communicate with us. She now knows more than 75 signs, and it is all because we watched this video to lay the foundation for learning signs.

I read the glowing reviews and ordered this video for my 9-month-old baby. She has no interest in viewing it and neither do I. The choice of signs is a disappointment since twelve of the twenty signs are for animals. The only ones useful to my baby's daily life are milk, more and eat. I wanted a video that included mommy, daddy, up, down, hurt, change or diaper. Those who enjoy the Baby Einstein videos and want to talk to their babies about animals may not be as disappointed in this video as I am.

I am a professional in the field of Child Development. I have raised four children and have helped to raise four grandchildren. This DVD teaches and engages babies better than any program I have ever seen. When you put a baby in front of this video they are captivated by the sounds, colors and movement. Something dynamic happens-the baby begins to interact with the material. You must see it to believe it.

My baby Niklas and I started watching My Baby Can Talk - First Signs when Niklas was 11 months old. I had heard positive feedback about the benefits from taking sign language classes and learning programs with infants, so I was interested in teaching Niklas to sign.

It was clear from the very beginning that Niklas was stimulated by the video. After watching the video twice, my baby was already signing the word ‘more’ to me. I was totally astonished and thrilled. Niklas has learned to sign 16 of the 20 signs featured in the video. He has also learned many other signs as well. Niklas’ face lights up, and he bounces with joy when he sees the introduction to the video. Now, Niklas instantly knows to look at my hands and watch my gestures when I am speaking to him. He loves to “talk” to me with his hands, and I love watching the satisfaction he gains from using his newly learned form of language.

The My Baby Can Talk - First Signs video presents useful words using ASL and the English language in a clear and stimulating format, which facilitates both the parent and the baby’s ability and desire to want to learn. The pace of the video is proportionately balanced to capture and hold the child’s attention while not boring either the parent or the child viewer. This is important since it is suggested that you and your baby watch the video approximately four times a week for maximum learning benefit. The images are colorful and fun and presented in a varied and creative fashion. The background music is inspiring and delightful. This video is brilliant!

Now that he knows he can talk with his hands and that I will understand, he has learned many more signs. Niklas is more confident and autonomous. I feel closer to him, and I am happy to be able to understand what he is “talking” about. This has greatly facilitated my understanding of what his needs are, and, as a result, it has reduced frustration linked to the communication-language barrier of this age.

This DVD and the second My Baby Can Talk DVD are the very best media I have found for my daughter. We started watching the First Signs DVD when she was 5 months old. During that month she started to sign "dog" (we have one and use the sign). At seven months old she started to say (speaking) "dog" and "duck". By age one, the second DVD, Sharing Signs, had come out and she had a signing vocabulary of about 50 signs and a speaking vocabulary approaching 100 words which astounded her pediatrician. A couple of months later her vocabulary is just too big to count. I am sure that watching these DVDs was instrumental in her early language development. We enjoy signing with our daughter but these DVDs are great for the spoken language development alone. However, when your child does start to speak, it is great to have him signing also because one can't always understand a child's pronunciation but it is easy to know what he is communicating from the signing.

My daughter prefers these to Baby Einstein, which she also likes, and always smiles when the music starts. The founder of the company said when speaking to my mothers club that they tested the footage with focus groups of babies to make sure that they captured babies' interest. It shows. They were engaging to her from the start and at nearly 20 months she still loves them. These two DVDs are the favorites of my husband and I also.

The music is great. The signing by both adults and children is helpful so that you see the sign done properly and know how to recognize your child's first attempts at the sign before they have the motor skills to do them more true to the ASL sign. Plus, kids love to watch other kids.

These DVDs are my favorite baby shower gift now and I eagerly await future releases from Little Hands Productions. I have checked out many other signing videos/DVDs from the library. These have a much higher production quality than most of the others, are much better and more engaging for infants and toddlers and, as nearly as I can tell, the signs are true ASL signs not made up.

For parents who enjoy these DVDs I recommend books from the Early Sign Language series which our daughter enjoys (kids love the photos of other kids) and helped us to learn more signs.

I began watching the My Baby Can Talk - First Signs video with my daughter when she was nine months old. She took to it right away and began signing within one week. Being able to communicate with my daughter for her basic needs has created a very important facet to our already close relationship. My daughter can now tell me when she is hungry, thirsty, or when she needs more of anything. This has reduced much frustration and helped us understand more of her needs at an important stage in her development. I have found that using the My Baby Can Talk - First Signs video has produced much faster results than friends who have tried to teach signing without such a visual, organized, thought-promoting tool. Most importantly, this program makes learning fun!

I must be missing something because this video seems to be getting good reviews. First of all, the video spends most of its time showing pictures of what's being signed instead of the actual signing -- and the children sign so poorly it's unrecognizable -- so my child picked up very little. Secondly, I was hoping to help my child sign so that I could communicate with him during our everyday activities (until he has the skills to speak intelligibly). 90% of the signs are NOT useful on a daily basis. They should have spent less time on signs like bird and duck and more time on signs like help and more. If you want your child to randomly sign the names of a dozen different animals then buy this DVD. If you want to empower your pre-speaking child to communicate their needs then this DVD is a waste of time.