About Baby and Preschool Signing

People often ask us what is baby signing and it’s really not as daft a question as it sounds. Sign and Smile is confident that everyone has signed with children in their care at one time or another without even realising it. The Wheels on the Bus, Wind the Bobbin Up, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, are all simple signing songs. Just think, how many times have you sang these songs to your charges providing them with visual actions? 

By performing simple signs to your little one’s on a regular basis, they can express their emotions, communicate their needs and show you their excitement for all that they see around them. 

Sign and Smile's baby signing techniques and signs are based upon British Sign Language (BSL), with some of the signs having been easily adapted for those less co-ordinated little hands.  Through songs, nursery rhymes, messy play activities, games, stories and other fun activities, you can introduce every day meaningful words to children allowing them to communicate with you and have meaningful interactions with their peers.

The concept of baby signing was first made evident by Dr Joseph Garcia (founder of the SIGN with your BABY programme) and doctors Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn (who completed a study on the subject funded by the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development). Their methods of baby signing were somewhat different, Garcia using signs from ASL and Acredolo and Goodwyn advocating that the signs should be made up between parent and child, but essentially the idea was the same.

Not only is signing beneficial to preverbal babies but verbal toddlers and  preschoolers can also enjoy this wonderful experience too. Children’s vocabularies are growing all the time and signing new words through similar methods to baby signing, can help introduce these words to the children in a fun and exciting way. In child development it is important for children to learn that words have a meaning and that in some cases these can be attached to a visual object or an emotion. At toddler and preschool age, children become even more inquisitive about their surroundings and baby signing is a wonderful way to help children understand the ever changing world that is around them. 

So what could this mean for your setting? Baby signing enables increased communication abilities, decreased frustrations and creates stronger professional carer/child bonds.  To find out what other benefits signing can bring to your setting and to the little one’s in your care, click on our “Benefits” webpage for more information.