Ellis watches his DVD

Ellis recently discovered the joy of watching the tube. I can plop him in the exersaucer, turn it on, and have 20 glorious minutes. At least it's educational! The only thing I have to put on for him are these brilliant DVDs teaching kids sign language: Signing Time. They're lowkey, have cute fun little songs, and lots of visual reinforcement of the words. Each volume focuses on a different set of vocabulary. Each time a word is introduced the two main kids sign it, an adult signs it, there's pictures of it (like "apple"), lots of other kids sign it, and they display the written word, too. I love it! We've borrowed vols 2 and 3 from the Early Intervention lady, but I've already ordered vols 1 and 2 for Ellis from Amazon.

It's very easy to learn the signs, because there's so much repetition, so we're picking up the words, too. It makes me feel good that I string a whole bunch of words together to form a concept. I will say that the only thing that really bugs me about ASL is the lack of nuance in verbs. Subjunctive? Gerunds? Future perfect? The only thing left for me to do there is to spell out the word. Hmmm. Right now we're sort of viewing sign language as a starting point, anyway, so we'll see.

At almost 7 months, Ellis is a bit young to sign back yet, but he definitely is clued into the fact that we're doing something important with our hands. He watches keenly, shifting his gaze from hand to hand to our face. I can't wait 'til he starts to try, too.