Baby Sign Language

I am so lucky to work at a school for children with learning differences because so many unique opportunities come up on a regular basis.  This lucky time happened to be a Baby Sign Language class!  This caught my attention for two main reasons.  One, I can't help myself, I love taking classes.  Mark has always joked that if the word class is in the description, I will take it (nerd alert!).  I love learning, love asking questions, and love taking notes - this is not new news!  Second, I have seen the benefits of signing just a few simple signs to babies first hand so I wanted to do this with our little one on a much greater level.  If I have learned nothing else from my job, children with oral language weaknesses really struggle to be understood so I want my baby to be able to communicate with us at an early age (hoping there will not be any oral language weaknesses, of course!).

My first class was Wednesday after school/work.  Two other girls in the class are my friends at work so it makes learning even more fun when we can laugh, joke, and talk to one another!  The class meets 12 weeks for 45 minutes and it looks like we will learn how to sign simple songs, food words, requests, among many other things.  I won't learn how to sign full sentences or anything, just words that will correspond with the spoken word so the baby will learn to "speak" before he/she actually can.  So cool!

We learned "The More We Get Together" last class along with the signs for grandmother/grandfather, crackers, fish crackers, milk, more, juice, cheese, you, me, happy, all done, friends, and I love you.  The time flew by!  Next week my Mom is going to join me since we are learning a variety of food words.

So, in a year when you see me at a restaurant with my hands flying while talking, I am not crazy (well, maybe just a little!), just signing!