Sign of the Times

Heather Honeck and I are team teaching Sign and Sing this month. Those are some lucky families that are getting two teachers for the price of one! And Heather is a speach and language pathologist too! We've been singing and signing about bears....and little Haley's favorite book is Brown Bear! What a great opportunity to take some highly motivating signs and some attention getting strategies to jump start the children in signing!! I'm seeing signs all over the class. And I must say the moms and both Nannas are extra great students! You are so open, creative and gentle. I can tell that you are enjoying this precious time with your children.

I thought you all would enjoy listening to the author, Bill Martin, Jr. read his book. He tells how he was inspired to write it too. I believe this one came to him complete with melody and rhythm...just listen to him sing it! Brown Bear Brown Bear

One other thought for today is about conceptualizing. This is what we call grouping different words under one sign. By that I mean in class we use the sign for music also when we want to sign "sing" and "song" or we use the same sign for quack as duck or the super handy sign for icky or yucky which is really the sign for dirty. It struck me that grouping words together may help little children's brains grow creatively. Our brains are programmed to search for patterns, make connections and "fill in the blanks". We are really showing them how to do this with conceptualizing our signs in our Kindermusik Sign and Sing class. We help them create categories for words that are related in meaning, pointing it out in an obvious way: with signs.

Here is the link for the American Sign Language dictionary that I really like a lot.

Thank you Sharon for the Brown Bear link.