Sunday, May 3, 2009

Eliza Signing Update

Recently Eliza has started making her baby dolls and stuffed animals use sign language. It must have been about a month or two ago that Eliza pointed to her baby doll's hand and said E. The doll's hand is scrunched up to look like the ASL letter E and she believes the baby is signing that letter. I NEVER would have made this connection. She also wants me to make her toddler sized Elmo sign things like read, play, dad, and book. This can get tricky because Elmo only has four finger. However, it is really very cute.

Seeing her make her dolls sign made me step back and think WOW- she must really view signing as an important part of communication. It also makes me excited that she will sign to her little brother or sister. She still signs quite often (although there is a decrease in signing as she talks more) and and tries to say almost every word she signs.

I have lost track of how many signs she knows. There is a different count for receptive and expressive signs. Sometime she surprises me with a signs I didn't even realize she knew. For example, when we went to the beach she was ecstatic. She kept signing the word sand and saying sand, sand, sand. In quite a few of the beach pics you can see her signing the word sand. I had forgotten she even knew this sign.

Here she is signing sand!

The other day we were listening to her favorite CD, Elmo at the Ochestra and she heard the word "ready". She immediately signed the word ready to me. I am often amazed that all of these signs are stored in her brain even though she doesn't use them regularly.

I know this is not the greatest video but if I try to capture her with the regular video camera she is constantly pulling at it so she can see herself. I am prompting grin the video but she normally does it without any encouragement.

While writing this post I decided to print out the Signing Time Progress Charts to try and figure out what she does and doesn't know. I will try to update later.

7 comments:

amber said...

omg that video is so cute! Love the dress she is wearing, by the way! ;)

Lori said...

that is so cute... and it's great that she has developed an understanding of how sign not only helps her communicate with you, but can help others communicate too. plus there's the whole thing of teaching is learning twice and she is teaching her doll to sign

marlrudowitz said...

OMG Eliza is adorable and SOOO Smart! Excellent that she is tranferring her learning to her dolls. I am so impressed!

grammyita said...

ADORABLE! The baby can even sign upside down...LOL

Marni's Organized Mess said...

That is so great!

HLD was at like 150 signs at 18 months. I remember those feelings! It was insane. Do you know Spiderman signs I Love You when he shoots his web? I didn't either until HLD pointed it out!!

Tatiana @ averygoodyear.net said...

it's amazing how intelligent children are. Sometimes I think about how amazing it would be if my mind developed at the same pace now as it did when I was that young.

Pierrette said...

1 sentence into reading this post I said aww...