Teach Your Tot to Sign: The Parents' Guide to American Sign Language

by Stacy A. Thompson, Valerie Nelson-Metlay (Illustrator)

Research has shown that very young children can learn sign language before they learn to speak. Teach Your Tot to Sign: The Parents’ Guide to American Sign Language provides parents and teachers the opportunity to teach more than 500 basic American Sign Language (ASL) signs to their infants, toddlers, and young children. Hearing children, deaf children, and children with special needs can benefit from learning the elementary signs chosen for this handy pocket-size book. Young children who can communicate using simple signs become less frustrated and also bond in a special way with their parents. In teaching ASL to parents of toddlers and preschool teachers, author Stacy A. Thompson recognized the need for a book that could be used at home and in the classroom. Her book features fundamental signs of great appeal to young children and concise instructions on how to sign, including the critical importance of facial expression.

Teach Your Tot to Sign anticipates all of the common desires and interests of young children — food, pets, planes, trains, cars, and boats, games, holidays, vegetables, family — in short, nearly everything. Reflecting children’s endless curiosity, the vocabulary chosen ranges from signs for “baby,” “broken,” “clown,” “dinosaur,” “firefighter,” “gentle,” “hot,” “hurt,” “ketchup,” “pacifier,” “rooster,” “sad,” “spaghetti,” “wagon,” “water,” “wet,” to “you’re welcome,” and even “McDonalds.” This lively assortment of signs will help every child convey earlier in their development their thoughts, feelings, and desires to their parents and teachers.

Genres: Reference

232 pages, Paperback

First published April 29, 2005

Reviews

[Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a diaper bag essential for me. Of my 3 kids, 2 were speech delayed to the point that they required early intervention therapy. Life with a kid who has needs but cannot adequately verbally communicate is a shrieking, tantruming hell. This book is quick, has only relevant signs to most kids' needs, and is purely alphabetical: no fumbling through sections of food or manners or whatever when you're being the subject of a public fit. We did need to supplement a few signs or modify them to make them clearer for our kids to utilize based on needs (my blueberry-obsessed daughter we had to look elsewhere for a sign for her fruit of choice, and for my son we needed to modify train to be easier for his chubby arms and hands).

That being said, this book has earned a permanent place in my heart for making my frustrated kiddos relieved that their needs were being heard and attended to. It was such a relief when after a few weeks of signing consistently with our kids (both in calm and upset times) it severely curtailed the amount of stress we had in our lives and assisted us in their transition from sign to speech through therapy. An excellent little volume to keep on hand from 6 months onto early elementary! My shy kiddo will still sometimes use signs to me if she is feeling particularly nervous about a new social situation.

[Lucy Bilik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good source to teaching your little person America Sign Language. I liked that it contained around 500 or more signs for little guys, which is so much more then baby books do and not as overwhelming as American Sign Language dictionaries.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear, great pictures, very helpful in boosting ASL vocab