Old St Nicholas Had a Tree (with Signing)

I've done a post on this Christmas song in the past 

This year I added sign language to it.

Check out video to learn the signs then go to the past post to hear the song.

Merry Christmas

Singing and Signing, What Fun!

Here's a video of my grand daughter and I signing the song

On Top of Spaghetti.

She is 19 months old and communicates through voice and signs.

You may notice that some of her signs do not match mine and that is because her fine motor skills are still developing.

One example is the sign for 'spaghetti'.  It is made using both baby fingers but she uses her thumbs.

As your baby begins to use sign you will recognize how they sign each word.

Scrambling Eggs

I started making scrambled eggs with the little one several weeks ago.

She loves sitting on my lap and doing it together.

This is a wonderful way to teach her how to cook.

As I said we have been making scrambled eggs for a few weeks and pulling the shell apart has been the hardest thing for her.

So one time when we were playing with play dough I shaped some dough like eggs and gave them to her to crack.  We went through a lot of 'eggs' that day.

This morning, after two eggs I moved her over to her chair and started on a fresh bowl, in case there were any shells in that first batch.

We were making extra eggs this morning for her Opa.  Here she is signing for Opa to come and watch.

After the first video I showed her how to hold the fork a bit differently to make it easier to 'whisk'.  Next time we make these I'll have to remember to bring her small whisk, from her play kitchen, to use.

 In this video she is signing egg (she signs it with one finger on each hand, instead of two. Remember she is a baby and still developing that fine motor) and cook.

Yum!

A great, quick meal and maybe the beginning of loving to cook.

Treasure Basket - Sensory Tubes

 This month's treasure basket is full of test tubes.

I found these wonderful test tubes at our local parent/educator store called Planet Kids.

I've had them for almost a year before deciding that they work perfect for this idea.

Each tube is filled with items I had around the house.

Items that may or may not make noise when the tube is shaken.

As she took her tube out of the basket, for the first time, she tried to unscrew the lid.

That is one of her favourite activities.  She is fascinated with taking lids off and putting them back on.

I knew that so I made sure these were screwed on really tight.

Also items that I believe she would be interested in, like these tiny babies.

They were left over from her mom's baby shower.

As she played with the tubes she began to look at them longer and noticing more about the items inside, like the babies with bottles.

Or the colour of the buttons in the tube with pipe cleaners.

Or pompoms of different shades of blue.

Bells from my Christmas decorations. I filled the tube too full and had to remove some so they would make a nice jingle sound.

Plastic straws make a very slight sound.

There is a tube with rice and foil and another with purple sand.

And the last tube has coloured bow tie pasta.

With these tubes we worked on the concept of loud vs quiet, upside down and turn over, identifying objects and sounds, body movements, and putting things in and out of the basket.

Colour Fun

 I surprised the little one with a new toy.

A homemade toy using paint chips from the store.

The paint chips have magnet strips attached to the back so they can stick to the fridge.  (She was quite interested in pulling the magnet strips off).

There are two of each colour so we can eventually work on matching.

But for now we are focusing on the colour names and how to sign each.

In the above picture she is signing 'white'.

 She liked the tin can that I brought them in

and she spent a lot of time opening and closing it.

After she had put almost all of them on the fridge she began to take them off again.  One at a time, opening and closing the lid after each addition.

It gave me another opportunity to say the names of the colours as she removed them.  She also worked hard learning how to take the cards off the fridge.

While she was busy playing with the coloured paint chips I made some jello for another activity.

I gave her the empty box and she started to put the paint chips inside of it.

 She thought of the idea of putting the cards in the box and followed through with it.  Then she had to figure how to get them out of the box.  Love watching her focus and calm approach at figuring it all out.

Easter Fun

Since this is our first grand child it is a year full of firsts, 

especially around the holidays.

It's the time that as a family you introduce your traditions, customs and beliefs to the newest members of the family.

My daughter talked about having an egg hunt and if I thought the little one would be old enough to be interested.

One way to find out was to do a bit of play around eggs before the hunt happens.

We set up a sensory table with shredded blue paper and plastic eggs.

It included eggs that looked like chicks, rubber ducks and a couple of chicks that were dressed as rabbits (but when you held them they made a 'cheep' sound).

Her dad grabbed an egg carton which was great for some incidental one-to-one corresponding.

She liked filling the carton, taking the eggs in and out.

Then she learned that she could crack the eggs open.

Some of them had little fluffy chicks inside.

She opened and closed so many eggs that she perfected her ASL sign for egg.

She loved this book and finding all the eggs hidden under the flaps.

As Easter drew closer we brought out some bunny ears and had fun hopping around.

 

Easter morning and they hid about a dozen plastic eggs in their backyard.

She loved finding them so much that they kept re-hiding them.

When Opa and I arrived a couple of days after Easter she was excited to have a pretend egg hunt in the house.

Her signing vocabulary is growing really fast.  In this video she amazed us by signing 'where' for the first time.

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Baby Sign Language

During my career I have worked as an interpreter for the Deaf and an intervenor for the Deaf/Blind.  

I loved signing and watching Deaf children learn their language and express themselves.

When my own children were young I introduced them to sign language but didn't use it as much as I would have liked.

Having grand children gives me the opportunity to start very early.

My daughter and son in-law were open to learning too.

The above picture is showing her sign 'milk'.

We started with signs that were relevant to her like;

mom, dad, nana, opa, milk, water, book

To help everyone learn the signs I created a photo block.

  

On each side of the block is a photo of an important person in my 

grand daughter's life.

In the corner I added a picture of the sign and the word.

  

It's fun to roll and find her picture then make the sign 'baby'.

Her first sign was 'water'.

To date she is signing dad (for most of the adults), milk, sleep, again, eat, baby, dog, and help.

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