Why is it important for The Apple Tree Learning Centers to start teaching Sign Language to children at a young age? Sign language is a complex language that has been used for centuries throughout North America.
The Apple Tree Learning Centers believes the importance of learning sign language is enormous. Apart from the common advantages related to learning of a second language, it permits children an insight into the Deaf culture and bestows more opportunities to communicate with those who are Deaf or hard of hearing.
The learning of sign language develops awareness and sensitivity to cultural and linguistic diversity in addition to preserving the cultural identity of one. It also provides cultural enrichment and is the best means of fostering understanding between people who are hard of hearing and those who are not. The Apple Tree Learning Centers is a place where children can learn values that will help contribute positively to society.
Sign Language Encourages Effective Communication
Sign language can help a toddler in recognizing words if they are connected to a sign. Every parent knows that young children love movement and actions. When you sing songs and put actions to them, children always want to perform those actions. “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” is a great example. As soon as the children start to sing the song they start to perform hand motions like the spider going “up the spout” and the “rain fall wash the spider out.” Children are able to remember better because there is muscle memory involved and the more senses involved the easier it is to learn.
Signing in a childcare setting allows caregivers to model effective communication, encourage conflict resolution, and help children to communicate with each other. Teachers who sign can spend more time interacting with and nurturing children than managing the challenges associated with Early Childhood Education.
One major thing signing helps in a childcare center is that it allows the children and teachers to communicate quickly and more efficiently. This means that the children will spend less time frustrated and crying and the teachers will not have to figure out what the children are trying to say.
Also being able to sign gives the children a sense of empowerment because they are being able to communicate which then leads to the children being happier. Sign language being taught at a young aged allows the children to learn two languages and communicate in more than one way with their teachers and peers. It is said that classrooms that use plenty of sign language are less violent.
Signing at a young age can also benefit children who are special needs children. Children that have special needs are able to use sign language communicate with their caregivers and other people. Children that suffer from Down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, aphasia and other language delays and impairments have used sign language to communicate with others.
