Thursday, January 31, 2008

Signing with the Babes



So Elliot, Henry and I are learning sign language. Babies' receptive language develops significantly earlier then their ability to verbalize their needs. Babies are able to communicate using finger signs much earlier, occasionally around 8 months. I've been signing "milk" with them for the last few months, but not all the time. I sign pretty inconsistently, so it will probably be longer before H+E communicate back. The other day I organized a list of all the signs I know for our signing group and it was a pretty impressive list. It's very nice that most signs are connected visually to their meaning.

Here's a picture of a boy who loves milk, understands the sign and will probably not sign it back for a long while:

1 comment:

Daphne said...

I showed E&H's book to a cute 18-month-old girl who very definitively signed "more" every time she and her librarian momma finished it. She got to read it and identify the babies and bears at least 3 times.