How to Use We Sign Products

All DVD’s are designed to be used by parents, teachers and caregivers with all children as fun and playful learning activities. They all provide a powerful way for children to use a variety of learning styles – physical, visual, verbal, musical and interactive – all at the same time. The result is a wonderful way for children of all ages, babies, toddlers, preschoolers and elementary children to

• become engaged in education,
• increase communication,
• enhance language development,
• improve reading readiness
• interact with the adults around them
• foster an enthusiasm for learning.

No signing experience is needed. The DVD’s include instruction or an instructor track to demonstrate the signs that are featured.

Sign as many or as few of the signs featured as you want. We have provided detailed instruction and demonstration on the signs that will be used in any of our over 100 songs. You can choose to sign all of them or begin with a few and add more as your proficiency increases.

Adapt songs for your age group. Children find signing to be fun and challenging. Keep in mind that the younger the child, the fewer signs you should choose to use. As children get older and their physical skills increase, you can add more signs.

Learn to sing and sign the songs first. The learning experience is greatly increased when parents, teachers and caregivers, learn each song or activity first. Once learned, they then instruct and help children to master the signs and songs. Children greatly benefit from this adult interaction.

We Sign products cover the largest age range for children. Our products offer parents how-two-instruction as well as song activities that are geared for various age levels.

Products by age level. Keep in mind that We Sign encourages adult participation in all the activities.

For Babies and their Parents: Babies & Toddlers 2 provides parents with easy-to-follow instruction, how–to tips, practical information and the top 30 words used with babies and toddlers.  Learn how to ease the parent / child communication frustrations while helping your baby to learn.  This DVD includes additional elements to maximize your signing experience. First are 12 Baby Songs providing songs that are both age appropriate and reinforce the learning of signs. Second, there is a video signing dictionary of over 200 everyday signs for use with babies and toddlers that will enable you to easily expand your vocabulary. Baby Songs is also available as a separate DVD

For Babies, Toddlers and Preschoolers: Fun Time and Play Time DVD's will provide you, your babies, toddlers, preschoolers and family with hours of signing and singing fun.  Play Time and Fun Time were designed for young learners, they encourage adult/child interaction and support early learning, language development and vocabulary growth.  Simple and playful songs for young signers.

For Preschoolers and Elementary Children: ABC’s, Colors, Numbers, Rhymes, Animals, These DVD's are ideal for preschoolers and elementary children. The songs featured encourage participation, support the learning of these core educational concepts and reinforce memory and recall through the use sign language.  These are learning rich activities that involve a variety of the multiple learning styles.

For Elementary School Children: More Animals and Classroom Favorites provide more advance songs and signing skills that reinforce learning while providing fun sing and sign along activities for classroom use as well as for school demonstrations. More Animals feature lots of animal signs and Classroom Favorites provide songs that can be used seasonally all year long.

For All Ages: Santa’s Favorite, Christmas Carols and Patriotic.  These DVD's are great for all ages and feature a We Sign instructor who will teach you the signs used in each song before you sing and sign along to these ageless classics.  They are wonderful ways to learn signs, vocabulary and songs.

Conclusion:

No matter what product you choose keep these point in mind:

1. Learn the signs and songs before introducing them to your children.
2. Choose to sign as many or as few of the signs as you wish to use.
3. When signing with the DVD’s, it greatly increases the enjoyment and signing abilities when it is a joint activity between child and adult.

Choose songs and signs used on age appropriateness. Many of the songs designed for older children can be used with younger ones by adapting them to the age groups ability. The younger the child, the simpler the signs and signing activity should be.