Books about teaching your baby how to sign (American Sign Language)

Sign With Your Baby Complete Learning Kit
(ASL-based Book, Training Video & Quick Reference Guide combination)
by Joseph Garcia

Average Review:

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com

  Sign with Your Baby Complete Learning Kit will enable you to communicate at new levels with your baby long before she can speak. This comprehensive package of book, video, and reference guide shows how simple gestures can communicate ideas like "I'm hungry" or "help me." Caregivers grasp baby's needs immediately rather than learn through trial and error. Dr. Joseph Garcia has designed the system so it's not necessary to learn an entire new language, although it also provides a terrific start in American Sign Language for a hearing-impaired child. A fascinating introduction delves into the development of language in children and uses informative line drawings to demonstrate over 150 hand signs for all kinds of actions and nouns. The accompanying video provides practical tips for getting started, some insight into the hows and whys of this method from Dr. Burton White (director of the Center for Parent Education), and inspiring sights of young babies signing effectively with their caregivers. The laminated quick-reference guide lists some of the most common words in any parent's day: cookie, no, and up are but a few. Garcia's clear, concise methods make learning a breeze, and caregivers gain outstanding new abilities to give the best possible care for the babies entrusted to them. --Jill Lightner

Dancing with Words:
Signing for Hearing Children's Literacy
by Marilyn Daniels

Average Review:

All Children Should Be Exposed To Sign
Reviewer: A reader from Minnesota

  Dr. Marilyn Daniels has written an exceptional book which should be read by parents/guardians of young children, want-to-be parents, day care providers, and teachers of the young. As the foremost researcher on Sign's benefits for hearing kids, not only does she write about her own research, but the research others have done with Sign and hearing kids too. The book's title seems somewhat limiting, because it also mentions the many other benefits Sign has been found to have for hearing kids - even if they never use it with the deaf. Daniels also points out that parents and teachers who teach kids Sign often feel they, the parents and teachers, benefit too. And the book has a chapter on how teachers can easily learn Sign to teach their students, and a chapter on how parents can easily learn Sign to teach it to their kids.

Signs for Me:
Basic Sign Vocabulary for Children, Parents & Teachers
by Ben Bahan, Joe Dannis

Average Review:
Best Book Available
Reviewer: Ross from San Diego, CA

  As a teacher of the deaf, working with families of deaf children from birth to age three, this book is an invaluable resource. The sign pictures are very clear and represent the signs used in "real life" in the community; however, written descriptions accompanying the pictures and/or "memory cues" would be helpful to many parents (e.g., sign "girl" by tracing the thumb along the jaw as if tracing the ribbon of a 19th century bonnet from ear to chin). The greatest downfall is the vocabulary chosen. I could live with the "categorized" vs. "alphabetic" organization IF the signs presented were more representative of vocabulary pertinent to the lives of children, birth to age 5, but they're not. BONUS POINTS, though, for the multi-lingual index in the back. A BRILLIANT idea!

More Simple Signs
by Cindy Wheeler

Average Review:
Wonderful book of practical words for everyday use
Reviewer: An Amazon.com Customer

  This book like its companion book "Simple Signs" was designed for the everyday person. Both books contain signs needed on a daily basis and is a wonderful first book of signs. The diagrams and explanations of how to do the sign are first rate and easy to understand and the illustrations are beautiful. I can not say enough about these books except to thank Cindy Wheeler for understanding her audience so well.

Baby Signs
by Linda Acredolo, Susan Goodwyn

Average Review:

 Not the best signing book on the market
Reviewer: A reader from CA
 

   I bought Baby Signs along with Joseph Garcia's Sign with Your Baby, and what a difference in how useful they are. While Baby Signs offers some good advice, it falls short compared to Sign with Your Baby. The numerous scenerios seem designed to convince a parent that signing is a good idea, something one might already assume about a buyer of a signing book. A significant portion of the book is devoted to the authors' research, which may interest some but did not help me learn to sign effectively.

I highly recommend Garcia's Sign with Your Baby. Garcia's book (and video and chart) are clear and were very helpful. Unlike Baby Signs, it is almost entirely devoted to explaining how to sign, including how to create your own signs. Whether parents develop their own signs, as Acredolo and Goodwyn suggest, or uses the simple signs Garcia explains, a baby can learn to communicate. Our son understands and signs for milk, more, all done, diaper change, and many other things.