"Teaching babies the signs for caregiving rituals can enhance successful communication and help them bridge the gap between understanding words and speaking them."
Carol Garboden Murray holds a master’s degree in special education and early childhood development. She has worked with young children and families for many years as a teacher and program director. She is the founder of the Early Childhood Institute of the Hudson River Valley and is the educational director of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
Carol Garboden Murray lives in New Paltz/Kingston, New York.
Awards
Awards for Simple Signing with Young Children:
- Earlychildhood News Director's Choice Award
- iParenting Media Award
- Mom's Choice Award
Reviews
Praise for Simple Signing with Young Children:
"This guidebook is designed to help teachers develop a meaningful vocabulary in American Sign Language to use in their teaching practice with hearing children. Murray shows techniques for embedding sign language in daily routines and in the curriculum as a natural form of communication alongside the spoken word. Teaching babies the signs for caregiving rituals can enhance successful communication and help them bridge the gap between understanding words and speaking them. For example, the signs for more or all done! can help create peaceful, smooth transitions for babies at mealtimes. The author illustrates signs that can help toddlers and preschoolers practice emerging social skills, including the sign for share, and express their feelings, with signs for sad and angry. Sign language helps teachers reach children with special needs and creates a common classroom language for English language learners. The signs are easy to learn, with photos of an adult or young child demonstrating each sign and showing the importance of facial expression. Each photo is accompanied by an explanation that graphically describes the movement, such as in the sign for thank you: hand starts at lips and moves outward as if blowing a kiss."
—Young Children
"Written for teachers of hearing children from birth to age six, Simple Signing is the perfect introduction to teaching young children through sign. There are chapters for infants, toddlers, and preschool children, with age-appropriate signs. The chapter written for teachers of infants focuses on using beginning signs as a bridge to communicating with words, while the toddler chapter focuses on signing to promote expression, enrich vocabulary, and teach social skills. The preschool chapter places an emphasis on using signs to enhance literacy skills."
—Earlychildhood News
"If you are interested in teaching your young children sign language, I highly recommend this book for its clear and direct style."
—Practical Homeschooling
"A thoroughly 'user friendly' instruction manual for parents, teachers, and care-givers to teach very young children how to communicate through sign language. Comprehensive, authoritative, and superbly organized, Simple Signing with Young Children is the ideal introductory instruction manual and very highly recommended."
—Midwest Book Review
"I found this resource to be very user friendly. The actual photographs of the signs are much more effective than black line drawings. Understanding that sign language teaches different concepts at different stages of development was very beneficial. The index with over 240 signs will be a great resource for both teachers and parents."
—Jody Martin, Director of Education and Training, Creme de la Creme
