Play in the water with your baby…in the tub or in a kiddie pool in the backyard. Remember children learn vocabulary best when you related the spoken words and signs you are showing them to sensory items, items that they are feeling while they play and interact with.

While playing or bathing your child, imitate his sounds and movements. Splash in the water and show your baby the sign for WATER. Pour a little bit of water onto your little one’s hand and sign WATER. If he likes this, doing it repeatedly, a little at a time, and sign WATER each time.

Bring a toy boat or duck into the water as well and allow them to float to your baby. When your little one reaches to grab the toy, label it with the sign for BOAT or DUCK. Take your turn with the toy and “hide” it under the water, when it pops up after you let it go, sign BOAT or DUCK. Do this over and over again and watch your little one giggle!

Produced by WeeHands and D-PAN, our WeeHands “At Home” Volume I features more than 33 ASL signs to use at home with child (age 0-6 years), language development tips and strategies, as well as 10 children’s songs signed from start to finish in American Sign Language! 50% of all proceeds from the WeeHands At Home DVD go to the Deaf Professional Artists Network.

**Oh Baby! Magazine is giving away a copy of the WeeHands DVD. Comment below for your chance to win!**

Babies want to interact, communicate and share with you. At around 9-12 months of age, this ability to share attention with you: looking at an object and then look at a person expectantly, as if to say “Look at that thing! Isn’t it wonderful!” called Joint Attention develops. Joint Attention is considered one of the crucial building blocks of communication and language development.

In her book, It Takes Two to Talk, Ayala Manolson, gives the suggestion “allow your child to lead” as a strategy to encourage language development. Ayala explains that parents and caregivers, in a way, need to say less and observe more when interacting with their children. Parents need to be “willing to allow their children to lead so they have the chance to express their feelings, needs and interests”.

When your little one does try to share your attention, follow Ayala’s advice and allow your child to lead your interactions. When your little one points at bird on the window sill and then looks at you expectantly she may be trying to share your attention about that object. As best you can, when you little one points at something and looks at you expectantly, stop what you are doing and look at what she’s pointing to. Give her the verbal word and the ASL sign for the object that she’s interested in. This object is something she wants to communicate about! Let her know that you recognize her interest and label the item for her.

I can remember a time when my own daughter was about 13 months old. She has been signing since she was 11 months old and had about 5-6 signs. One of her favourite signs (and play objects) was BALL. One day she pointed to an orange on the counter and signed BALL. I followed her lead and picked up the orange and showed her the sign for ORANGE. She looked at me like I was crazy and signed BALL back to me! I quickly peeled and cut up the orange into little pieces, gave her a piece and signed ORANGE. This was her first bite of orange and she loved it! I must have given her 30 little bits of this new fruit and signed ORANGE each time. Towards the end of the orange she was signing ORANGE back to me to request another piece of her new favourite thing to eat!

Use these tips below to follow your baby’s lead and to share her attention:

Allow your baby to lead your conversations based on her interests and where her focus currently is Share your baby’s attention: if she’s pointing to something acknowledge what’s she’s pointing to and show her the sign for the object. Use nonverbal cues such as expectant looks, smiles and signs to let her know you are listening to her coos, babbles, signs and words.

The motor skills needed to use signs develop before the motors skills
needed for speech. If you think of the word “spaghetti”, the sign is
easier to produce than the spoken word for young children.

My name is Sara Bingham and I am the proud founder of WeeHands! Currently, we have 80+ instructors across North America teaching parents to use American Sign Language vocabulary with thier babies, toddlers and preschool children!

I completed an honours Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics at the University of Ottawa, and also have a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Carleton University. In addition, I have an post graduate diploma from Georgian College, as a Communicative Disorders Assistant. Before starting WeeHands, I worked for 6+ years with children with special needs. I have been studying American Sign Language (ASL) since 1991 with the Canadian Hearing Society, the Bob Rumball Centre for the Deaf and at Durham College.

I’m the proud mom of two signing not so wee ones: Joshua, age 9 years, and Sabrina, age 7 years (they keep aging!). I also teach at Durham College within the Communicative Disorders Assistant program and I am a retired group leader for the parent support group, Attachment Parenting International of Durham Region.

WeeHands™ was born in 2001 in my empty dining room. Eventually, the class size got too big for the room (and my brother-in-law gave us a dining set!) so I had to find space in the community in Whitby (Ontario). This same month a group of moms from Mississauga (Ontario) requested a class-on-demand and our schedule quickly snowballed after that!

Our classes teach parents how to use American Sign Language vocabulary with their babies, no made up signs here! We also have a strong focus on language development and provide parents with activities that help them teach their babies ASL vocabulary and include language development strategies.