Maggie loves to sign - and we love her signs

We recorded these videos to capture some of Maggie's baby talk. Just as little kids can't quite say all of the sounds in a word, Maggie's signs aren't quite complete. She loves to sign. We've bought and been given some of the Signing Time DVDs and we've had a regular rotation from the library. Maggie is transfixed when a new DVD comes home. I think signing makes language much more of a game for all of us. Maggie probably loves how her signing helps to capture her parents' attention too. Maggie does love to jabber, and sometimes we even get a little jibber-jabber from her hands: she'll wiggle fingers and twist her hands and we have no idea what she's after, but she's happily explaining.

This first video has one of our favorite signs: bugs. The true way to sign "bugs" is to put your thumb on your nose while curling/wiggling your index and middle fingers a couple of times in unison. We'll be sad when Maggie learns how to do this sign correctly.



Here are a few more animals that Maggie knows: tiger, gorilla, monkey, owl, and porcupine (half-heartedly)



Finally, Maggie has a small blue "First Words" book from Priddy Books and she knows a sign for all 26 pages. She almost signs every single picture in the book in this video. Sometimes she gets in a hurry to see her favorites. Here's the word list: girl, boy, shirt, pants, socks, shoes, coat, cup, chair (sit), ball, boat, car, truck (she skips this one), train, plane, bear, orange, apple, banana (skips?), leaf, flower, cat, potty, dog, duck, and fish.

If you watch closely you can tell what one of her favorite things is... it was also her first sign.



9/16/2009 9:22