31 for 21 Day 25: Signing Time Books

Just about everyone we know who has a late talker in the family uses sign language with their child. It's such a great tool for communicating before the spoken words come.

Lots of us learn sign language words through Rachel Coleman's Signing Time videos.  But you might not know that there are also a series of Signing Time board books.  I really like these because they reinforce the signs learned in the videos, and Anthony loves them because they show the stars of the videos -- Alex, Leah, Rachel, and of course Hopkins-- in photographs signing and acting out the words.  I bought the series of books for Anthony's preschool and they've been a big hit.  The other kids seem to be having a lot of fun learning the signs. One parent said her child has learned 20 signs already.  Yesterday the teacher read one of the books at story time, and then they all sang "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" using the signs they learned from the book.

I didn't realize this, but they can be a good tool for teaching sight words as well.  Today I showed Anthony one of his "Meet the Sight Words" videos.  There is a part where they show the sight words in sentences and the word to be learned pops out.  The sentence was "I love you", and the sight word "I" popped out.  Anthony not only said "I" when he saw it, he then signed "love"!   "Love" isn't one of the sight words we've ever taught him.  I tried to think of how he might have learned it, and I think it must be from this book, which I just got this week.

How great is this?  Anthony not only read a sight word that we haven't been specifically teaching him, but the word was love.