Getting to know you

From the moment you meet him or her, you want to understand your baby. What is he thinking? Is she hungry, tired, too cold, content? Early on your baby also has an innate desire to communicate with you. In a Kindermusik Sign & Sing class (developed by Signing Smart™), we give you and your child the tools and knowledge to communicate with each other using American Sign Language. Through songs and play, you’ll both learn signs for words like “mommy”and “eat,” and you’ll know if he wants “more” “milk” and when he’s “all done.” This research-proven signing class for hearing children speeds language development, eases frustration, and enhances long-term learning abilities.

Keys and Strategies

In addition to learning over 50 signs you can use with your child each day, we’ll teach you the keys and strategies for bringing signs into your child’s world, helping them to see your signs, adapting to your child’s learning and interest level, ways to encourage your child to sign, and how to recognize and respond to her attempt at sign. Before you know it, you'll be easily substituting  American Sign Language (ASL) signs in familiar songs and incorporating them into your everyday activity, thereby  improving your child's language skills, fine motor skills, understanding of concepts and strengthening fingers for zipping zippers and using scissors.

Learn as you play

You'll never have to memorize a list of signs. This curriculum gives you the ASL signs that are most useful to you, and most interesting to your child. So playtime and everyday items around the house—ball, bubbles, mom and dad—become the objects of learning in the classroom, and sign language becomes a natural, happy part of your child's day.

Hearing children who know signs, learn language almost twice as fast

As early as 11-14 months old, hearing children exposed to sign language put little sentences together faster than non-signing children, who do not begin to combine words into short sentences, such as "Da-da car" until the average age of 20 months.
Study conducted by Dr. Michelle Anthony and Dr. Reyna Lindert, Signing Smart program founders.

Educational for you as well as your child

You’ll have a wonderful time in Kindermusik Sign and Sing classes and you will be surprised by how much you can learn while having so much fun. Throughout your classroom experience and weekly Parent e-mails you will learn how activities aid in your child’s development and ideas for ways to continue the learning throughout the week.

What you’ll experience in class

• You’ll play, sign, and sing. Using everyday items in engaging small and large group activities, we’ll sing songs and practice the sign as we say the words, play with toys, and help her learn both the spoken word and the sign.
• Expert advice. You’ll learn to spot your baby’s most “teachable moments” and the sign language teaching methods of the experts. Plus you’ll learn to recognize and respond to your child’s versions of signs.
• Communication and development of spoken language through sign language. When your child is chasing a bubble or asking for the ball, you’ll make the sign for it and say the word. So she has the ways to associate the word with the object: she holds the ball, she hears you say the word, and she sees you make the sign.

 The learning continues throughout the week

Activity books, DVDs and flash cards showing both adults and children doing the same sign will help you remember the signs and practice the specific strategies learned in class. You will also receive a gift card to play.kindermusik.com along with a list of the music we use in class so you can download it and continue the musical experience at home.

In order for you to enjoy and get the most out of your Kindermusik class, we make the following recommendations:

• We will be sitting on the floor for many of our activities. Our Monroe studio has wall-to-wall carpeting and a circle time area rug. Our Southbury studio is a suspended hardwood dance floor with a circle time area rug. If you would like, please bring a soft crib size blanket or bath towel with you for the floor activities. This would be especially appropriate for the youngest infants.
• Remember to dress comfortably. We will be playing on the floor at one moment and the up and moving the next.
• Both parent and baby are shoeless in the class.
• All belongings are kept with shoes in our cubbies and coat rack.
• Nursing and bottle-feeding are permitted in class, if you feel the need, relax against the wall and observe the activity to do at home. Please set bottles and sippy cups out of reach of the other children.
• The first five or ten minutes of class will be used to purposefully come together. We will play soft music and have instruments or other materials on the floor for you and baby to explore. Please greet and visit with other parents and get settled during this time. If you arrive late, please join us!
• All instruments and objects are cleaned after each class.