Sign with Infants

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Do you have a baby or toddler who you are trying to teach sign, perhaps because of a hearing or speech impairment, or to support communication with a family member or friend? Or, perhaps, you are simply planning on using ?baby sign? to improve communication with your pre-verbal child.

Where do you start?

Start with only 1 or two signs that are highly motivational to the child and create high motivation settings to start. For example; take a bag of bread to feed the ducks. Give the child a small amount of bread. When they gesture/grunt etc for more; say and sign ?more? and then give them some more bread. The 2nd time do the same but this time use your hand to help the child sign ?more?. Gradually build up from there so that you end expecting the sign, before bread is supplied. However do not expect the signing to be performed perfectly and continue to ?show? the sign on your body and correct the sign on theirs if wrong.

This system works as the child is highly ?motivated? to sign. . . they want more bread.

Once you have mastered your starter set of only a few signs pick 1 topic, eg clothing, and try to introduce those signs.

Label! Label! Label!

Parents/Carers the best tip we have is label. Do not sit down in the evening and try to memorise a list of signs and then use them in context the next day. This is too hard! Use something like SignPlanet.net to print labels of the signs that you are trying to learn, then stick them up where you will be using those signs. For example, stick the signs for clothing on the draw faces; that way the signs are where you need them, when you need them, and you do not have the pressure of remembering them.