sign: SURPRISE!

So I had a big personal SURPRISE up my sleeve. I'm sending this to you all via the hospital and just delivered our second baby girl! 

SURPRISE! ;)

The blog must go on. ;)
 Please don't forget our awesome giveaway for the My Smart Baby Sign Dictionary app! I can't speak enough praises for the quiz feature I love so much (there's a quick pic of it below). I keep saying the 'cons' of these apps I'm reviewing are their titles, because people think the app is less than what it is. I'm telling you -  all my homeschooling, SLP, teacher, and parent friends - this app is good! Go join the giveaway! Laura, owner, of My Smart Hands, did a great job teaching adults how to sign simple concepts to children or just basic beginners. 

sign: COLOR. some toddler friendly fun this weekend

This weekend I decided Little Fingers is old enough for mini-lessons and fun activities to start learning her colors,  maintaining attention, patterns and other great skills.
We started with our COLORS. We've been talking about colors while we color or do puzzles or other things but tonight we started sorting with our COLORS. I got some great ideas from Pinterest, went to the Dollar Tree and got to work (a.k.a 'fun and play').

Now I always tell everyone, this is not the verb 'to color' - this is the noun like 'what COLOR do you want.' This is an ASL concept, which can be different in other sign languages. 

Not that I used a sign for pom poms, but now she asks to play with her 'pom poms'. Sure! Let's go play with the pom poms! 

The coolest coolest part -- when I would say/sign the colors, I could see her concentration on my hand signing. She then try to imitate. No, I'm not saying she got it right away, these signs are a little tricky but you know what. When she asks for colors snacks in the future or color crayons in the future and she pairs the sign with the spoken words, I'll understand her 100%!

I'm all ears (hehe) to hear other toddler-friendly activities you use to teach colors and sorting!

sign: SHARE ... We're doing a lot of learning about SHARING!

So now that we're reaching that point where Little Fingers' language is exploding; one of our new phrases is, "that's mine." Yikes! So the sign SHARE is taught daily and I mean several times a day!

I'll let you know how we make out! Keep your fingers crossed!



looking for some clever ways to teach older children to sign?

App Review & Giveaway: My Smart Hands Baby Sign Dictionary

I recently reviewed another Sign Language app ...

My Smart Hands Baby Sign Dictionary

This app was well organized into categories as well as alphabetized (and of course there's a 'search' feature so you do not have to scroll through the entire list). 

Other Features:

My Favorites List: The 'Favorites' list allows you to keep a list you'd like to focus on or have easy access to for a later date. It's good for those signs you can never remember!

Signs: To learn a sign, you simply click on the word you would like to learn, and a new screen pops up with Laura signing it. First without talking, followed immediately with the verbal instruction of how to produce the sign. This is the nice feature to walk you through any necessary steps to help you produce the sign.

Categories: There are over 15 categories (e.g. actions, animals, feelings, numbers, & foods) that allow you to learn categorically if that's what you are aiming for (e.g. 5 food items).

Quizes: The feature I loved the most was the quiz feature. The quizzes could be used for young children and others learning sign language. It lets you customize how many questions you want in your quiz and how many choices per question you see. It also gives you the great feature of using your 'favorites' list we talked about above.

                                               

You can also watch Laura sign the question again if need be. It provides you the results of how many you got right as well. 

Laura Berg, the owner, understands and believes in the idea of using actual American Sign Language -- though it's confusing to know with the title perhaps of 'Baby Sign Dictionary'. But I think the thought process is simply saying the signs in this dictionary are more geared to young learners. 

Years ago she enjoyed teaching her own children sign language when their were very little and now gets to share that joy with others. She was excited to build the great curriculum found in her My Smart Hands programs utilizing ASL. But we'll share that for another day. For more information about Laura and her awesome program, check her out at My Smart Hands.

She has other great apps as well such as ...

Sound like something you may be interested in? Of course! So ... I've partnered up with Laura for a great giveaway for you guys (for the iPhone app version). I am giving away THREE copies of the Baby Sign Dictionary! Enter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Need a resource?
American Sign Language Dictionary-Flexi (3rd Edition, Revised)