Vocabulary Building
When I first started to sign with my babies, I started off slowly. I chose a few key signs such as "milk", "more", "change", "diaper", and "finished". I started off with just a few key words so I didn't overwhelm myself. It also helped me get used to the idea of speaking and signing at the same time. Remember, my babies are hearing babies so the goal was for them to speak eventually. I was giving my babies TWO options to communicate with me....SIGNING or SPEAKING...whichever came first.
When it became easier for me, I would then combine the words. Before I fed my babies "milk" I would say and sign "milk". While they were feeding, I would repeatedly say,"You're drinking MILK". Then I would again repeat it saying and signing,"MORE MILK". At the end of the feeding, I would sign and say,"MILK is FINISHED". In that feeding I would sign at least nine times.
Now...just for fun....here are my two kiddies with their animal hats. It gives us a chance to combine "hat" and their choice of animal. "Nix" is signing, "TIGER" and "Kai" is signing,"MONKEY".
Funny thing, my youngest, "Kai" never liked to wear hats and would tear them off instantly. When we started signing and saying the word, "hat" he thought it was so funny that he began to enjoy wearing his hats.
