I can sit here and list all sorts of reasons why you should teach your child to sign. Instead I want to tell you about what teaching ASL vocabulary did for our family.
As I already stated, we started showing Singing Time videos to our youngest son, when he was 18 months old. He watched that first video every day while I was getting ready for work for a month, for the simple reason that we only had the one video. After about 3 weeks we saw him do his first sign. It was awesome. found another video and had him watch it every day while I was getting ready for another couple weeks. Since it had taken 3 weeks for us to see his first sign, and because my son has special needs, I thought it might take him longer to learn the signs. He seemed to be picking up signs fairly quickly.
The holidays were coming around again, so we asked for more videos. Once we had enough to rotate, we still had him watch a video for at least 1 week at a time, just so he could have more time to absorb the material. During this time, we added a few signs in our daily routine, but not nearly as much as we should have been doing. My bigger boys started watching the videos too, and began learning sign and singing the songs around the house too. They were learning the signs very quickly.
Then when my son was around 32 months old, I was out with the big boys and my husband and little one were home together. They were looking at flash cards when the cards slipped and fell across the floor. These particular cards had pictures on one side and words on the other. Before my husband could flip the cards to the picture side, my son was signing the words from the word only side. When I got home I was stunned to see that my son signed 80 percent of the flash cards right.
We were amazed and stumped. Our son with Down syndrome, whom we were worried might never learn to read, was reading words before he turned 3 and we were really not sure how.
Next post will be the search for the truth of what was teaching him to read, and the realization of just what he had learned.
As I already stated, we started showing Singing Time videos to our youngest son, when he was 18 months old. He watched that first video every day while I was getting ready for work for a month, for the simple reason that we only had the one video. After about 3 weeks we saw him do his first sign. It was awesome. found another video and had him watch it every day while I was getting ready for another couple weeks. Since it had taken 3 weeks for us to see his first sign, and because my son has special needs, I thought it might take him longer to learn the signs. He seemed to be picking up signs fairly quickly.
The holidays were coming around again, so we asked for more videos. Once we had enough to rotate, we still had him watch a video for at least 1 week at a time, just so he could have more time to absorb the material. During this time, we added a few signs in our daily routine, but not nearly as much as we should have been doing. My bigger boys started watching the videos too, and began learning sign and singing the songs around the house too. They were learning the signs very quickly.
Then when my son was around 32 months old, I was out with the big boys and my husband and little one were home together. They were looking at flash cards when the cards slipped and fell across the floor. These particular cards had pictures on one side and words on the other. Before my husband could flip the cards to the picture side, my son was signing the words from the word only side. When I got home I was stunned to see that my son signed 80 percent of the flash cards right.
We were amazed and stumped. Our son with Down syndrome, whom we were worried might never learn to read, was reading words before he turned 3 and we were really not sure how.
Next post will be the search for the truth of what was teaching him to read, and the realization of just what he had learned.
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