Introducing our newest Instructor!

I'm so happy to welcome our newest instructor to our WeeHands teaching team!  We have the best instructors!  A big welcome to:

• Kristin Buckler of Sorrento, British Columbia. Kristin is a proud mother of a beautiful signing daughter, Phoenix, born in 2008. She has a background in Early Childhood Education and as an Education Assistant, working with children that have speech delays.  Kristin now enjoys being home with her daughter and is excited about being able to teach with WeeHands.

Welcome Kristin!

Is learning to sign beneficial for babies?

Often parents may worry that using baby sign language with their children may "make them too lazy to speak if you give them the sign language option".

I truly believe signing with young children increases vocabulary and parent/child bonding.  It in no way slows down speech development (my college students comb through journal articles on this very topic every summer). If a baby is in a hearing and speaking world, they are going to want to communicate in the long run in the fastest and most effective way for them to communicate.

To simplify it, language happens in the brain, speech happens at the mouth, sign happens at the hands.  The motor skills needed for signing develop earlier than the motor skills needed for speech.  Sign allows children to learn, use and play with language.  When speech skills catch up they already know the words (the language) because they've been hearing, seeing and signing them.

APPLE - American Sign Language sign for apple

Show this sign to your baby before, during and after eating an apple. You can also show your baby this sign when looking at apples in books or at the grocery store.




To start babies may not make the same handshape, but will make a motion in the same body space.

Thank you to Hannah, a Communicative Disorders Assistant student, for helping us making this video.