Signing with Toddlers – Research

Sign with Toddlers

Signing American Sign Language, ASL, provides toddlers and their parents, teachers, and caregivers with fun and educational activities.

Toddlers benefit greatly from using sign. Signing with them is different from signing with babies. A toddler’s life is expanding rapidly and if they are little balls of energy, then they are also little information sponges. Learning rapidly, exploring everything is an everyday adventure. Signing offers toddlers a natural way to enhance learning. It involves movement, something that is second nature to a toddler. But signing is also fun and playful as it involves them in their learning. Signing for toddlers helps:

• Foster brain growth.
• Develops fine and gross motor skills.
• Improves eye-hand coordination
• Increases usable vocabulary
• Strengthen memory and recall
• Fosters an enthusiasm for learning

Start signing with your toddler even if you did not sign with your baby. Signing can be used and learned all throughout childhood.  Begin now and you and your toddler will find that signing is an enjoyable bonding activity that is a valuable way to enhance early learning.  It works because they learn while using a wide variety of learning styles. Singing and signing has children learning verbally, physically, musically, visually and more.

A toddler's basic need to communicate coupled with a rich and stimulating language environment seem to be the main factors that propel their early language learning.  Signing with American Sign Language, ASL, provides parents and caregivers with a way to make language learning stimulating.   Signing engages children toddlers and when added to activities, like singing songs or reading books, helps to connect words and their meanings, making the understandable and useable.

Key things to keep in mind when signing with toddlers:

• Keep it simple and expand your signing as you become more comfortable with your abilities.
• Begin with words that encourage communication (all done, potty, please, help) and behavior shaping (stop, gentle, share).
• Add words that are of special interest.  Words from songs or books or from around your house (bear, cat, fish, car, jet, flower).
• Have your toddlers attention when signing.
• Follow their lead and focus on what they are interested in.
• Create special signing times for engaging in signing activities.
• Keep the activity fun and playful.