Table of Contents
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For my daughter, Isabella, and all the children I have worked with during my years as a Montessori teacher and nanny, without whom we would not have discovered this wonderful early communication tool. They really taught me a lot!
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all the families who contributed their stories, photographs and ideas to make this book possible. A special thank-you to Ulrike Gaul and Sharon and Ashleigh Eastwood for sharing their stories.
My husband, Giles, deserves a large amount of recognition for his hard work piecing this book together and for his endless support, encouragement and computer skills. Thank you for sharing all the long nights with me.
I am eternally grateful to our editor, Graham Adams, for his time and guidance when it came to knocking my manuscript into shape, and to Kylie Penman for the many hours put in helping with layout and designing the original cover, then redesigning it when we frequently changed our minds!
Communication is not simply about using words with meaning; to a baby who
does not have the skills to talk, communication is about signs.
Dorothy Einon
Author of Early Learning and lecturer at University College, London
Foreword
By Gordon Dryden
Coauthor of The Learning Revolution
By now the lessons should be engraved in the mind of every young parent: Around 50 percent of the ability to learn is developed in the first four to five years of life not 50 percent of ones wisdom, knowledge or intelligence, but around half of the most vital pathways in the brain, the pathways on which all other learning will be based.
This means parents, and not professionals, are the worlds most important teachers. And home is the most important school.
Maria Montessori, the great Italian educator, was proving it in practice around a hundred years ago. By providing the right multisensory environment, she had hundreds of three- and four-year-olds reading, writing and doing basic mathematics well before starting school.
Now Karyn Warburton adds another great insight into early childhood knowledge: baby sign language even before children can speak and walk.
Her practical experience as a mother and a teacher bears out some of the latest findings of neuroscience. We know, for instance, that babies can absorb and store information by sight and sound well before they can crawl or walk. Very simply that is because of the way in which the nerve pathways around the brain and the body are myelinated by the insulating sheath that grows around those pathways. And the brains incoming pathways are myelinated before the long motor pathways that enable young legs to walk. And the speech pathways in the forebrain are myelinated after the segments of the brain that process seeing and hearing.
But you dont have to be a brain scientist to know that we learn better and faster if we use all our senses. The more babies can see, hear, feel, smell and taste experience, the more they learn. And the more they can physically play with information, the faster and more effective their learning. Right throughout life: if you want to learn it, do it!
Now Karyn Warburtons fine book provides a completely new dimension to this basic knowledge. In short: a great communications tool that not only encourages babies to absorb information right from the start but to play with it, act on it, and enjoy it.
Better still, its easy. And its fun.
Welcome
You are about to embark on one of the most rewarding experiences you and your baby will share together during their most formative years.
Since we began running baby signing workshops in early 2001, thousands of parents have integrated the use of Baby Talk baby sign language into their daily lives. As working parents ourselves, we understand just how hectic life can be, leaving limited time available to learn a new skill. That is why our approach to learning baby sign language is to keep the entire process as simple, natural and straightforward as possible, not to mention FUN.
Karyn & Isabella
Baby signing is an experience that no parent and child should miss out on!
About the Author
Karyn Warburton, the founder of Baby Talk, is a Montessori preschool teacher with more than 14 years experience with young children. Karyn has studied and worked in the field of childcare in both New Zealand and the United Kingdom, where she incorporated the use of sign language in her work with special needs children, children with English as a second language and preverbal infants. Karyns own daughter, Isabella, was an enthusiastic baby signer.
About This Book
We have huge numbers of parents approaching us wanting our workshop to be available in book form. Most had read other baby sign language books in the past but could not find any that offered good, clear instruction and inspiring examples. The other common request was for a signing dictionary that contained a broad selection of important signs. With this in mind we created Baby Sign Language.
Chapters one and two briefly look at the theory surrounding baby sign language and touch on some important research carried out to date and the many benefits that were discovered. We feel it is important that parents are aware of the origins of baby sign language for hearing babies and understand how it assists with their infants development.
Chapters three to five cover the all important practical aspects of how to teach baby sign language to your baby. The Getting Started section tells you exactly that when to get started, which signs to begin with, how to teach these signs and what these first signs might look like. There is also a troubleshooting area for the most common problems experienced by signing parents.
Chapter eight contains our extended sign dictionary, which includes words our signing families and childcare providers have found the most useful. We have categorized each set of signs to make them easier to locate. We have also graded each sign beginner 0-9 months, intermediate 10-13 months and advanced 14 months and over which will allow parents to select the signs that are best suited to their own babys abilities.
All topics have been developed using current research, our own experiences and observations, and those of the thousands of parents and caregivers who have attended our workshops. Happy signing!
How to Use This Book
We have included numerous stories from signing parents who have attended our classes, and these are highlighted in gray boxes throughout the book.
