My kids have been watching Signing Time on our local PBS station here for over a year now. They love the show so much that we got them one of the DVDs for Christmas. It really is a great kids show and in my opinion is one of the best educational shows out there.
The goal of the show is to teach kids basic signs from American Sign Language. It’s a beginning point for learning sign language so hearing children can more easily communicate with deaf children, but just as importantly it’s a way for kids who haven’t learned to speak yet to communicate with their parents. Studies have shown that children who learn to communicate with signs before they learn to speak experience lower frustration levels in communicating (as do the parents), and thus have better temperaments, which even helps avoid the “terrible twos.”
The story behind the show is really interesting as well.
She and her husband immediately started teaching American Sign Language (ASL) to Leah as fast as they could learn it. Something remarkable happened: by the time Leah was 18 months old, her sign language vocabulary far surpassed the spoken vocabulary of hearing children her same age. While Leah’s little friends could only point and whine for something they wanted, Leah found it much more effective to sign, “Juice, not milk”or, “Cheese and crackers, please”. Other parents took notice, including Rachel’s sister Emilie, who started teaching sign language to her infant son Alex, so that he would be able to communicate with Leah. Emilie was thrilled one morning when baby Alex, then only ten months old, found his own use for sign language: he stopped fussing, looked up at her, and signed “milk”.
From personal experience, I’d have to say that my kids’ vocabularies seem to have been positively affected by learning these signs.
Here are a few examples from the show:
Days of the week
Counting
Helping out
I just found out that as of October 2008, the show has been pulled from all PBS stations as the extremely small production company can’t afford the $1.5 million dollars it takes to produce a 13 episode season (PBS does not pay for shows). If you’ve got ties into any corporate sponsorship programs or any other ideas, I’m positive they’d love to hear from you.
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There have been quite a few studies demonstrating that teaching sign language to nondeaf children at an early age has all kinds of positive effects, including higher IQ scores.
Sorry to hear that Signing Time is in trouble. I have heard there are other DVDs available that do similar things, but it’s nice to have something like that on free TV.
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