Sing & Sign for Young Children: A Guide for Early Childhood Professionals

Research shows that teaching sign language to all young children has a wide range of benefits, from enhancing social-emotional and preliteracy skills to supporting positive parent-child relationships. With "Sing & Sign for Young Children," early childhood professionals will have a fun, easy, and highly effective way to teach and practice key ASL sign vocabulary through music and play during everyday classroom routines. Packed with engaging sign language activities and original, kid-friendly songs, this innovative program was created by a music therapist and early childhood specialist with years of experience working and playing with young children. Dr. Anne Meeker Watson, creator of the SING.PLAY.LOVE.® program, shows you how to transform your daily activities--including arrival, mealtime, shared book reading, free play, and departure--into joyful learning opportunities infused with music, play, and warm adult-child connections. You'll get everything you need to implement the program when you purchase the book: original songs with lyrics and scores, guidance and tips for beginning the program, pictures of all the signs and hand formations, suggested activities and games, a list of additional resources, and videos modeling signs for each song. Benefits include: (1) Strengthens skills essential for academic and social success: communication, social-emotional, self-regulation, and literacy skills; (2) Combines signing with music--a powerful, motivating, and neurologically rich experience for young children; (3) Helps children build positive, meaningful relationships with each other and with their educators and caregivers; (4) Infuses the school day with joy and fun, creating an environment that's conducive to sustained attention and engagement; (5) Gives children many chances to practice and demonstrate new skills across daily routines; and (6) Helps support communication development for all children, including dual language learners and children with language delays.