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Signing Time Your Way: Integrating Signing with Homeschooling

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Colleen Brunetti, M.Ed. Originally Published March 5, 2013. Updated to reflect current information. Families who homeschool their children have a wonderful opportunity to choose curriculum and activities tailored exactly to their child’s needs and interests. Let’s look at some of the ways that signing with your homeschooled child can be integrated into your day. Capitalize on your child’s learning strengths As we well know, children learn in different ways and through a variety of strengths. Sign language taps into tactile (touch), auditory, visual, and kinesthetic (movement) ways of communicating, making it highly accessible for just about any young learner. Further, …

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Sneak Preview! Activities from TreeSchoolers Episodes 2 and 3

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By Colleen Brunetti, M.Ed., C.H.C   As we head into the home stretch of the Rachel and the TreeSchoolers Kickstarter campaign, we thought you might enjoy a little sneak peek. Here are a few snippits from the Episodes 2 and 3 Activity Guides. Each Guide features detailed lesson plans and activities to reinforce the concepts taught in each episode – perfect for families and schools alike. We hope you have as much fun doing the activities as we had creating them! Episode 2: Grow Plants, Grow!   Activity: Ask an Expert! Purpose: In this episode, Rachel & the TreeSchoolers show that they can …

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How to Make Smart Media Choices for Your Child

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By Colleen Brunetti, M.Ed., C.H.C. Media is pervasive and prevalent in our society. Our job as parents and caregivers is to not only steer children away from topics and content that may not be age appropriate, but to also actively teach our children to be wise consumers of media. What your child can and should watch, and where they watch, depends a great deal on their age and maturity level, but there are some good guidelines you can follow at just about any age. WHAT TO AVOID No media in a child’s bedroom – keep media use to open family …

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Talking to Children About Traumatic Events

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By Colleen Brunetti, M.Ed. The events in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15th began to feel too familiar. A few posts about “something” on Facebook, a few minutes later the picture beginning to become clear. Knowing within such a short time that real horror had happened. Spending the rest of the day purposely shielding my six year old son from all available live media even while I scrolled frantically on my phone for updates, and to check in with loved ones who might be in harms way. Everyone in our nation has had to grapple with …

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Teaching Body Awareness in Your Classes

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By Colleen Brunetti, M.Ed. Sometimes it can be quite a challenge to teach our littlest clients. In fact, I often have people ask me, “How do you manage to teach babies and toddlers classes? Do they even pay attention?” Well… yes and no! Right now I have a class of all one year olds. I don’t get 45 minutes of eye contact and interaction from them… not by a long shot! What I do get, however, is a chance to model for the parents and caregivers ways to invite their babies to explore the world, while integrating all the signs …

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Proud To Be Me! Teaching Body Awareness Using Signing Time

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By Colleen Brunetti, M.Ed. Children have a lot of natural curiosity about the world around them. From the question of why the dog has a tail, to how the car works, to those sometimes hard to field questions about the difference between boys and girls, there seems to be an endless amount of things in our world for our curious little ones to ask about and explore. Perhaps one of the most important set of questions to address are those related to bodies. One only needs to look as far as the nearest billboard or the TV commercial currently on …

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Target Markets in Your Own Backyard

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Colleen Brunetti, M.Ed. One of the best things about being a Signing Time Academy Instructor is that we have such a wide market to teach our classes in. There are in-home classes, mommy and me groups, libraries, rec centers and so much more. Have you ever considered adding homeschooling families as a potential place to bring your classes and products? Homeschooling Trends The rate of children being homeschooled is growing nationwide, by up to 75% since 1999 in fact! It’s a growing trend that offers you a great opportunity to bring Signing Time to children of many ages. I was …

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Having Fun with Animal Signs

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The learning aspect of sign language has been well covered in the white paper: Signing With Babies and Children. From cognitive development to language acquisition and early literacy skills, signing offers great ways to support your baby right up through the elementary years. But what good is all that learning without some fun? We here at Signing Time believe that children should be able to wiggle and giggle their way right through learning, and that’s just what we strive to support. Three of our best videos for learning through play are  included in the Signing Time Animal Signs DVD Set: Volumes 7 – 9. In …

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Ready to Read, Ready to Write! How signing boosts early literacy

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By Colleen Brunetti, Master Signing Time Instructor   Many of you likely started signing with your children in the infant years. You knew it was a great way to know what your baby was thinking before she could talk, and perhaps that it would help ease those toddler tantrums that stem from frustrations over communication. Many families stop signing when their child learns to talk. What many people don’t know is that during the preschool and early elementary school years, signing can help your child learn to read and write. Let’s look at how signing can help your child get …

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Signing is Expression

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By Colleen Brunetti, M.Ed. One of my favorite things to do when introducing children to sign language is to talk about the value of expression while signing. It really helps the language begin to come alive, and it also taps into a child’s natural exuberance. Last year I had the pleasure of being a guest of the PTA Cultural Committee at my son’s school and I taught a lesson on “Feelings” to four Kindergarten classes and one preschool class. It was a blast, and I thought I’d share the lesson and some of the supplies I used. Feel free to …

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