songs and more

Songs are a delightful and wonderful activity for infants, toddlers and parents.!! Those with rounds and repeating refrains work wonderfully to teach a sign. The whole song need not be signed just one or more words or phrases that you would like to emphasis. I think of:
The Ants go Marching
The Farmer in the Dell
Mary had a little lamb
This old man
Three blind mice
Three little kittens
Row, row, row your boat.
Twinkle little star
She'll be coming round the mountain
This is the way we laugh and play
If you're happy and you know it.

There are I'm sure, many many more but you get the idea. For example in Mary had a Little Lamb, a parent or educator could decided to just sign 'lamb' and 'white [sign same as] snow' and 'lamb' and 'will go'. It could be extended to 'school' and 'laugh and play'. Or whatever, or how ever many signs you would like to teach, review or use in the lesson.

Using songs as part of a theme is a wonderful way to reinforce the thematic lesson. I once did a six week theme on insects and of course, in it was the Ants go Marching. The kids loved it!

There are so many wonderful CDs out now for children's songs. All of the above songs are very easy to find at any chain book store or through Amazon.com. I also found in my recent research for children songs that they can be down loaded to an Ipod or MP-3 player very inexpensively.

I also found a wonderful site, http://www.nurseryrhymes4u.com/ that has the words for you to print out and the tune of the songs too. It is a terrific site because it also has themes and 'print and do' pages, alphabetical listings of songs, and, it is beautifully done. I think you'll like it.

You will also like the following for the same reasons:
http://www.allkids.co.uk/kids_pages/early_learning.shtml
www.preschoolrainbow.org/preschool-rhymes, www.smart-central.com,http://www.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/index.htm

There are so many but the above also give themes and coloring pages and so much more. To incorporate signing to any of the above just pick the words you want to use and go to 'ASL browser' or 'ASL PRO' and watch the signs until you know them well. Be aware that sometimes one sign does NOT fit all.

For example the sign for 'run' is only for the action of running with your feet. It is not for a machine running, or a the water running or some other act of running but not with feet. Also be aware of some verbs that have directionality. By that I mean that the sign moves in different directions depending on the meaning of the sentence. An example of this is the verb 'give'. This is signed in the direction of the person giving. I give to you you is signed in a different direction than you give to me, or he gives to her.

If you are just signing a few simple nouns like 'dog', and 'sheep' and 'town' this won't be a problem however. Although I do stress that ASL ( American Sign Language) is the preferred method of signing and accurate signing means continuity of learning across all environments, I also want baby sign practitioners to have fun.

So be flexible and be open to new experiences to learn and play with language. Children love to sign and play with their fingers! Songs and more help us to enjoy that play with them.