Home Signing Info Signing Skills
E-mail

Parent,  Teacher, and Caregiver Signing Skills

No signing skills are needed!

Studies have shown that children benefit equally from instructors who are fluent in signing or have had no previous experience but have the desire to incorporate its movement into a child's life.  Parent, teacher, caregiver involvement is an important. It provides the basis for continued use and reinforcement of signs in playful activist at home and at school. Adult interaction ensures that a positive message will be given to children and that learning can be fun. Parents around the country have come to understand the benefits of signing with children and that parental involvement will support early learning, foster parent-child bonding and help to establish a child's readiness to enter school.

This is what is needed to sign successfully with children:

  1. Have the desire to include signing into your daily life.
  2. Sign for communication and with fun, playful activities.
  3. Begin slowly and add more words with proficiency and understanding.
  4. Prepare yourself in advance by learning the signs you wish to introduce in songs and books.
  5. Instruct and lead the signing activities with joy and enthusiasm.
  6. Positively and enthusiastically support all the signing efforts of your children.
  7. Creatively add the signed words into daily activities and conversation.
We Sign™ DVDs will help you to learn to sign words correctly and to sing and sign the songs before you present the activity to your child. It only takes minutes to learn to a few signs and to sing a song. Keep in mind that We Sign programs are not teaching ASL as a language but rather using its vocabulary, concepts, movement and visual nature to enhance learning.