Tiny Fingers Information

Tiny Fingers offers an opportunity for you and your entire family to interact and communicate with your child on a completely new level. The Tiny Fingers program uses American Sign Language for early communication and long-term learning with hearing infants or toddlers. Through play, activities, songs, and games, you and your child will be given the tools to communicate months earlier and with a broader, more extensive vocabulary than with spoken words alone. Tiny Fingers opens up a new world of communication, intimacy, and ideas in young children. What will we learn? Whether you are enrolled in a class or a workshop, you will be shown how to introduce and use these signs to your child on a daily basis. During each class, we will introduce an activityto reinforce the signs and will learn to sing and sign a familiar song related to the theme of the lesson. A few additional signs will be introduced for use in the songs. All signs taught are developmentally appropriate for infants and toddlers and based on American Sign Language. Is this a class for babies or parents? This class was developed for parents to learn signs in a baby friendly atmosphere. Strategies for parents to use signs, paired with speech, in natural contexts such as during meals, bath time, or while at play will be discussed. Since we cannot expect the babies to focus on a full length lesson nor leave a class having learned all the signs from the one exposure, our focus is to ensure the adults have learned the signs so they are able to provide adequate exposure and repetition of these signs to their children in context. While the adults are learning, the children are playing among us with toys that represent the signs we are learning, providing the perfect opportunity to introduce some of those signs to them in context.