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33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Useful Guide to Signing with Your Baby or Toddler, September 6, 2005
This review is from: Signing Smart with Babies and Toddlers: A Parent's Strategy and Activity Guide (Paperback)
I started using sign when I watched a parent I know communicate (completely!) with her 1 year old this way. I asked her for guidance, and she referred me to Signing Smart, an innovative, educational sign program gaining increasing attention across the country. Honestly, once I started using their ideas, I have never looked back!
Signing Smart strategies, most of which are highlighted now in this fabulous activity guide (yeah!!!), have allowed me to communicate with both my sons from a very early age. For example, I started using Signing Smart with my older son, who is now almost 5, at around 13 months, and he took quickly to the activities. By 18 months, he was both signing and using words like "astronauts fly in rockets to the moon," wowing both myself, my husband,and all of our friends whose kids were only saying things like "bye-bye" and "car". We credited his early verbal abilities to learning how to communicate easily using the ideas from Signing Smart!!!!! We also found it to be a similar developmental process with our younger son, even though he has a very different personality and is much quieter than the first. In fact, at age 2, he continues to both speak in a complex manner and sign--all of this with very little effort thanks to Signing Smart!!!
I must say one thing about the other guides out there. Naturally, in the very beginning, I took a brief look at all of the national programs because I felt it was important to be thorough and consistent once we began using sign strategies with our son. Honestly, I felt the other programs' methods were more confusing and demanded a bigger time committment for less actual results. In addition, their creators did not appear to have the educational background, creativity, knowledge of child development, and organization of the Signing Smart creators. Knowing that companies compete, I believe one of the reviewers may have called this guide "confusing" as a way of promoting a different program. Trust me (and I'm a clinical psychologist who works with both kids and families), it really doesn't get any more straight-forward or easily applicable than the Signing Smart Activity Guide!!!
Through my experience, I now recommend the Signing Smart guide (and other Signing Smart materials) to all families of young children with whom I either work or play. Give it a try, because you will be AMAZED at how simple and effective it is (I was)!!!!!
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Most comprehensive book available!, May 13, 2005
This review is from: Signing Smart with Babies and Toddlers: A Parent's Strategy and Activity Guide (Paperback)
I have read two other books about baby sign language and was truly impressed by this book. It goes so much further than just giving you a list of signs and telling you to repeat them every time you say the word. There are so many strategies and so much information in this book that you have to read it several times to get it all. What I really loved is that it not only focused on how to get your baby to sign back in the quickest time frame possible, but it focused a lot on having deep and meaningful interactions with your baby and layering the signs into those primed learning moments. I also appreciated the signing dictionary in the back with REAL pictures of people doing the signs, instead of line drawings like some other books have that are sometimes difficult to interpret. A+++
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful!, March 29, 2006
This review is from: Signing Smart with Babies and Toddlers: A Parent's Strategy and Activity Guide (Paperback)
When my baby was born I didn't know if I wanted to sign with her. I knew that research studies have shown that many babies who sign start speaking later and I certainly didn't want that to happen. Now that my baby is six months old I have put those concerns aside. Very early on I started speaking to my baby using patterns sometimes just vowel sounds, then consonant/vowel combinations, then "cat", "rat", "sat" sequences and she was facinated. I used very specific words and said things the same way each time so she'd aquire meanings for the words. I also started finger spelling to her the words we commonly used. She loved it! Just with doing that my baby was babbling with her voice/mouth and with her hands by three months!
At five months I decided that I wanted to sign with my baby because she gets so frustrated with not being able to communicate what she wanted. I did not want to have to go through this for the next year or more while I wait for her speech to develop, so I went looking for materials. I sign some ASL and a lot of "straight" English and wish I signed better ASL since it is more efficient and useful. Because of this I decided I wanted to start her off with ASL (American Sign Language). I was refered to this book along with the "Sign with Your Baby" video by Garcia. I'm so glad I did.
This book starts out with the whys - why sign, why ASL, and gives so many wonderful examples. True, if you already want to sign this might not be so useful to you, but I really enjoyed the heartwarming stories of babies communicating what they really needed to say or just wanting to learn more about their world. And some of these babies were signing at four months of age! She also gives examples of babies who started using language more quickly once they started signing.
Most of the rest of the book are activities to do with your baby to teach and use the signs - and my favorite part - pictures of babies signing. While this book isn't terribly useful for someone who knows instinctively (or otherwise) what to do, it is very useful for those of us who do or don't know most of the signs and are just having a hard time coming up with ideas on what to do to create the opportunities to use them. I've also found this book helps me identify my own baby's efforts.
Please note that ASL (American Sign Language) is exactly that - the sign language used by the Deaf communities in the United States. Other parts of the world use different sign languages.
At the end of this book is a typical sign dictionary and after that is a dictionary that explains how a baby might do each sign. I am sure they separated these so it was quick to look up the picture you needed so you can sign it, but it would have been useful to have the description of how your baby might do the sign with the pictures. It would have been really nice if they could have put some of the pictures of babies signing these signs with these descriptions too. I know I would have spent more time lingering in this section if they had.
So, in the end all you need to sign with your baby is an ASL sign language dictionary and keen observation of your baby for his/her own signs. But if you feel you need some suggestions and tips I'd recommend this book and the "Sign with Your Baby" video. Oh yes, after only three days of signing my baby was signing "milk" and "finished", a couple days later "potty" and a few days after that "up" ...she will be seven months old next week. We couldn't be happier.
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