We are fortunate to have the opportunity to add a sign language teacher to our team for the toddlers. She will be coming to our home every week along with their speech therapist. And we really like her.
Tommy signing EAT.
We met this teacher first thru the Deaf/Blind program when Tommy was first born and he could hear only at 65 + decibels and the eye doctor said at 6 months old he had the eyesight of a 6 week old (delayed visual maturation). But now, we can access this teacher thru our 0-3 early intervention services. Yippee!
The SUN in itsy bitsy spider.
Starting to sign mom (his hand went up to his chin). And looking really cute! We hope sign language will work as an additional mode of communication until they have more verbal words. We don't want the twins to rely on sign, but rather this will make things much more helpful right now and avoid bad behaviors that stem from frustration at not being able to communicate.
The teacher showed us two games to play with our older kids and between us as parents to increase our attention to hand signs. One game is "same and different" where one parent shows different toys or similar toys and the other parent signs same or different. And you do it kinda quickly. The other game is a counting game just "1,2, 3" and Liam usually verbally says GO. The numbers 1 and 2 are signed with the usual fingers and 3 is signed with adding your thumb. The twins really watch our hands count for that game.
There are so many websites online for sign language, cool videos that kids can watch like Signing Time (available at our library) it makes learning this eaasier. We hope by December when they start preschool they will have about 200 signs. Hope. It's what works for us this Wednesday.