Baby Sign Language Introductory Workshop - Virtual

Baby Sign Language Introductory Workshop - VIRTUAL (One 90-Minute Session)
Baby Sign Language gives babies the opportunity to communicate long before they can verbalize their wants and needs. Signing with babies accelerates language acquisition, reduces frustration, enhances a child's self esteem, and deepens the bond between parent and child. Fun activities and songs will show how easy it can be to integrate more than 20 signs into your everyday routine and jump-start your child’s verbal skills. Babies are welcome but not required to attend. This 90-minute Introductory Workshop may be followed by the six-week series with themes like mealtime, animals, colors, family, bedtime, and more! Expectant parents and parents with babies from birth to 24 months.
For FAQs and more details visit www.happybabysigns.com/faqs.html

Benefits of Baby Sign Language

 • Accelerates language acquisition.   Research studies have found that signing babies normally begin to speak earlier and have larger vocabularies than non-signing babies.

 • Provides a parent with the wonderful opportunity to develop a window into their child's mind.  By including signs in daily activities, parents spend less time guessing what children want and more time fulfilling their specific needs.

 • Teaches a simple language that allows babies to easily express their immediate desires and needs, significantly lowering frustration levels for everyone.

 • Allows babies to lead the conversation about topics that interest them.  When a parent then verbalizes the sign, it fortifies a baby’s expanding vocabulary.

 • Utilizes more diverse areas of the brain for communication.  Rather than language being processed solely through auditory pathways, signing adds visual and kinesthetic emphasis to a child’s auditory input.

 • Gives babies a sense of control when they know that those around them not only hear them but understand them.  This greatly enhances a child’s self esteem and emotional stability.

 • Helps parents and health care providers localize pain and identify medical conditions. 

 • Enables children to express their fears or concerns.

 • Decreases aggressive behavior such as biting, hitting, and excessive noise in preschool and elementary school programs.

 • Increases a child’s interest in reading.

 • Builds an iconic bridge between two languages in a bilingual family.  For example, the same signs can be used for words spoken in English or Spanish.  Knowing a sign for a word helps a child recognize the same word spoken in other languages.

• May actually improve a child's IQ.  Research studies have followed signing babies as they mature.  At eight years old, these children scored, on average, 12 points higher in IQ testing than a control group of non-signing eight year olds.   The signers had a mean IQ of 114 (75th percentile) versus the non-signers’ mean score of 102 (53rd percentile).  The study was designed to equalize socioeconomic factors between the two groups.

When should I start signing with my baby?