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BlumeFlower = sniffle

There are so many signing pages in English so I only want to point to our Pittsburgh activities.

If you never heard of using sign language with hearing infants before they can speak, please watch the  VIDEO    © copyrighted by sign with your baby ®

Using easy to learn or alterated ASL (American Sign Language) for communication purposes in early infanthood has proven to be enhancing IQ scores, alleviate frustration, and open a window into the mind of your preverbal baby.

Our daughter Lena is using about 14 signs at the age of 13 months.

bookShe is 14 months old now and uses 20 babysigns, the latest she learned are: water, shoes, ball, finished, open, grasshopper, duck,             on this photo she signes "book"

Here in the Pittsburgh area I used to offer music and sign language meetings for parents and their babies to bring music and communication to families of children aged 8-20 months. This "class" offered sign language instruction reinforced through music and songs to aid in language acquisition for the babies and communication among family members; various american and european studies show the benefits of such instruction on IQ, vocabulary development, reading skills, spatial reasoning skills, and more.

For more information, call +49 2151 6444798       or      send an e-mail

essenIt is a great fun and educational time for babies and parents!                                                                                    Picture to your right: Lena signs "eat, or I am hungry"
Lena is now 18 mth old and uses 43 signs. She already tries to speak and says around 5 recognisable words. She learns German and English at the same time and for a bilingual baby it is helpful to have signs which connect the two languages.

Excerpt from an article by Marilyn Daniels :

Sign language in general seems tailor-made for young children. "The motor areas of the body mature sooner than the mouth and other language articulators," says Dr Daniels. This means that it is easier for children to learn and remember signs than it is for them to acquire fluency in either spoken or written language. "Children like to use sign," she adds. "They pay more attention because of the movement; they become more involved. They are involved in the process of learning and interested in it."

For parents and teachers concerned with the education of hearing children, Dr Daniels' research is most significant because it shows that using sign language from infancy through sixth grade results in improved literacy. The children she has worked with demonstrate better recognition of letters and sounds, better spelling, and larger English-language vocabularies than children who were not taught sign language.

fertigLena says/signs finished!

I found something very interesting by a nobel prize winner about learning in an online magazine:

EDITOR: Winning a Nobel Prize is an incredible achievement! What advice can you give parents who wish to help their children create a "Nobel" worthy future?

Carl WEIMAN: Not being a parent myself, I am very wary of offering advice on the enormously complicated task of raising a child. I stick to much easier jobs, like doing physics! However, there is some advice that I recently gave to students entering college, and perhaps it might have some relevance here.

1. Work hard and learn as much as you can. There is never going to be enough time in life to do everything you will want to.

2. Take responsibility for your learning. Very soon after you finish college there is no class or grade that will matter, but what will always matter is your ability and desire to learn new things. Keep that principle in mind as you go through your education and learn because something is worth knowing, not because it satisfies some official requirement or will get you a good grade.


Article on BBC News : How babysigning helps communication

Another  very interesting article is about signing chimpanzees. Taken into consideration that chimpanzees can only use their tongue and mouth to produce screeming sounds and therefore cannot learn the human language, some scientists taught them how to use ASL American Sign Language Whatever happened to Washoe?

Thank you for your interest.

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