Love and Cuddles Sessions (Tiny Talk Baby Signing Classes)

Member Name: ariom

Product:	Tiny Talk Baby Signing Classes
Date:	07/10/08 (53 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: socialise, familiar songs

Disadvantages: BSL too complex for little hands, signs not what babies need to communicate

My experience of baby signing was through the "Love and Cuddles" format. I decided to attend because there aren't many places to meet parents in my area and this class was actually being run in my village. The classes were £4 each. The format of each session (one hour long) was half an hour of singing songs with accompanying signs, followed by half an hour of social time for the parents. The signs used are based on British Sign Language.

I attended only a couple of classes, before the local session was cancelled due to lack of interest. The social part of the sessions didn't apply to me since I was the only one there. I wasn't impressed by the sessions for a number of reasons:-
- half an hour sitting still watching other people sing and sign (or even signing a bit yourself) is way too long for three year olds,let alone babies. Babies need tactile stimulation, so just looking at puppets and toys brought along by the teacher isn't interesting enough.
- many of the BSL signs are too complex for little hands without much fine motor control. I met the instructor's son at one session who had been signing for a year and a half, and you could only make out which signs he was using because he could say the word alongside. So, as an early communication device for pre-verbal children it didn't work. A system based on Makaton may be better.
- some of the songs we did were just action rhymes and didn't involve signing.
- the signs taught weren't thought through in terms of what babies need to communicate. for example we learnt emotions such as angry or happy, but these are things that adults don't communicate with words, more often with facial expression and gesture, but not the word nappy.

It was probably just this format, but I wasn't impressed by baby signing and won't be trying it again.

Summary: this won't get my baby talking early