Mom, Dog, Book, Love, Sunshine, Shoes, Eat, Milk, Gentle (my version), Ears (their location, not the ASL sign thereof).
New accomplishments (& a few I forgot to include last time):
Hi/Bye
All done
Bedtime
Stars
Toothbrush
Dad
Sleepy
Bath
Ball? (iffy)
I also think she signed Jacket tonight. Pending confirmation.
Also pending further use of Car.
She also does the motions for wheels on the bus, patty cake, etc but if I'm being brutally honest, she is doing them en masse, i.e. not necessarily (read: at all) on cue with the lyrics, so they might be closer to awesome dance moves, & not so much word association.
"More" was one of her first signs but we were almost exclusively using it for food, which we thought might be confusing, so we started using "eat". My little gourmand nailed that but "more" seems to have dropped off the radar. After realizing this I started using "more book" for books no.2 & 3 but I'm just not sure she's ready for a two word construct. "More" is such an abstract concept - if she's in the bath & isn't ready to get out is she going to sign more or bath? Bath. (actually she just pouts and scoots away). I need to ask her speech EI but that gal doesn't seem to be as interested in signing as getting my girl to talk. And she's coming along - she'll do almost all the age appropriate sounds on demand ("on demand" with any toddler being, of course, relative) but she's 2 1/2 years old still hasn't said "mom" yet. (Which... well..... yeah.) I don't doubt she'll talk eventually given the constant stream of jabber and the letter sounds. I just haven't the faintest idea what eventually means. I think her receptive language is fine. If I say we're going upstairs or it's time to eat, she heads over to the stairs/table. Also, she'll make those eve-of-talking sounds: something close to zzzz(ip) when we're zipping up PJs, 'da-da' when we say 'thank you', etc. So in the meantime, we sign [SOME OF US *COUGH* MORE THAN OTHERS] because A/ it'd be nice to communicate with her "now" (however long "now" lasts) and B/everything I've read and heard says signing reinforces language development.
Things that she would know except which require exceedingly excessive fine motor skills:
banana, hair, her brother's name, socks, toast, juice, water
Things that are confusing and/or which require far too much spatial precision:
milk/orange/eat. snuggle/blanket. baby/love. grandma/grandpa (as compared to mom/dad). wash hands/soap. brother.
Things she could give a flying you-know-what about, but with repeat play of Signing Time, she'll probably eventually pick up: boat, train, bus, plane (sorry daddy), potty, any and all non-canine animal signs.
Hopefully we'll get a couple more Signing Time videos for Christmas. I looked for some ASL classes but they are geographically undesirable and I haven't the faintest frickin' idea when I'd actually attend. I also found this site: Signing Savvy, which offers little 1-2 second videos of each sign. Except they occasionally vary wildly from our DVDs and/or our baby-signing books WHICH IS ANNOYING. Are these dialects? Is baby ASL distinct from grown up ASL? Southern ASL vs west coast? Shall we whip out the blue & red bandannas? (Sorry, that's such a SoCal reference). Seriously.
