Baby Signing Time 2

The smaller group of moms and baby's at Sign Time 2 worked out great!  We were small enough for some quality conversations to get to know each other so we started out with a little ice breaker and found out some fun facts on how we met our significant other.

Horse

then we started up the DVD and interacted with our little ones, singing, saying and imitating the signs we were seeing.  Some of the words we learned were eat,  drink, cracker, water, cereal, milk, cat, bird, horse and a few others too.

We discussed the importance of not getting overwhelmed and learning too many words at the same time.  Just choose a few words, use them on a regular basis then add 2 or 3 more a few days or a week later.  Soon you'll be communicating with your child before he/she starts to talk :)

We had some active children who found my pots and pans so we broke out some wooden spoons and let them bang around to make some music.  We added some  fun hand instruments that i have around the house too.  I love <3 <3 <3 hearing the sound of children playing around.

OH and i also had the opportunity to see what needed to be moved around my home to make it more kid friendly!

Thanks everyone who came over and played. I plan on learning the curriculum and making this a regular play-date :)  

Baby Signing Time - First Run

Since we are a group of moms who would prefer to minimize the amount of money we spend on activities with our children, sign language classes are a bit out of our budget. However, that doesn't mean we don't wish to explore exposing our little ones to a few signs. We have the whole Baby Signing Time kit that includes all four dvds, cds, books, and flash cards, so I figured I should share with my friends.

Anyway, since this was one of our first official Moms who PLAY activities, we ended up having a huge crowd of women including a lot of new faces. Therefore, we did spend a lot of time mingling and snacking. Oh yeah, about the snacks! Our gracious host, Carolyn put out a wonderful spread for us moms and definitely set the bar pretty high in that area.

We also took some time out to do a mini ice breaker during our introductions. During this ice breaker, we briefly (at least we tried to) discussed what we did before we became a mom along with what we miss. There are a ton of teacher/educators amongst us mommies.

Okay, back to the signing. We managed to squeeze in the video and pass around the flash cards and book. I'm sure we didn't all absorb a ton of the information, but I'm going to address a few things that I know about sign language.

Your child may not begin to sign back to you before the age of 6 months, but, the sooner you start the better.  This way, you yourself master different signs and your child will have all the repetition necessary to learn. Signing appears to be about follow through and consistency. So, the more you do it, the more likely your child is going to pick it up quickly.

It is recommended that you start with a few signs at a time and use ones that you are able to sign on a daily basis. Like milk, mommy, daddy, more, diaper, etc. I found this website to be extremely helpful in finding first time signs without having to spend any money.  You could also Google some YouTube videos that could be helpful.

So, hopefully this becomes a regular play date for us playful mommies and our little ones start signing in no time. We have are next session already set up. Although we are now limiting attendance to six moms this time around.

SIGN OF THE DAY TO PRACTICE: BANANA