Sing & Sign for Young Children: A Guide for Early Childhood Professionals

Research shows that teaching sign language to all young children has a wide range of benefits, from enhancing social‐emotional and preliteracy skills to supporting positive parent‐child relationships. With Sing & Sign for Young Children, early childhood professionals will have a fun, easy, and highly effective way to teach and practice key ASL sign vocabulary through music and play during everyday classroom routines.

Packed with engaging sign language activities and original, kid‐friendly songs, this innovative program was created by a music therapist and early childhood specialist with years of experience working and playing with young children. Dr. Anne Meeker Watson, creator of the SING.PLAY.LOVE. (R) program, shows you how to transform your daily activities--including arrival, mealtime, shared book reading, free play, and departure--into joyful learning opportunities infused with music, play, and warm adult‐child connections. You'll get everything you need to implement the program when you purchase the book: original songs with lyrics and scores, guidance and tips for beginning the program, pictures of all the signs and hand formations, suggested activities and games, a list of additional resources, and videos modeling signs for each song.

BENEFITS:

• Strengthens skills essential for academic and social success: communication, social‐emotional, self‐regulation, and literacy skills
• Combines signing with music--a powerful, motivating, and neurologically rich experience for young children
• Helps children build positive, meaningful relationships with each other and with their educators and caregivers
• Infuses the school day with joy and fun, creating an environment that's conducive to sustained attention and engagement
• Gives children many chances to practice and demonstrate new skills across daily routines
• Helps support communication development for all children, including dual language learners and children with language delays

DOWNLOADABLE MATERIALS: Put Sing & Sign into action with a complete package of downloadable online materials, including 13 audio recordings, 18 instructional videos, and 18 printable pages of song cards, instructions, and photographs and illustrations of key vocabulary words. (Vocabulary word pages are available in both English and Spanish.)

Author: Anne Meeker Watson
Publisher: Brookes Publishing Company
Published: 10/13/2021
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 11.30h x 8.60w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781681254975

About the Author

Anne Meeker Watson, Ph.D., MT‐BC, is the founder of the SING.PLAY.LOVE. (R) program. Through her writing, product development and workshops, she shares information about the benefits of music and play for supporting early learning and kindergarten readiness and gives easy and practical strategies for embedding both into the daily lives of young children. Her program is being used all over the country and across the globe, most recently making its debut in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

Anne has taught music to students from preschool through college levels. She received the Excellence in Teaching award given by the Learning Exchange, Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, and the Kansas City Star. She was a commission member of the Vision 2020 Housewright Symposium on the Future of Music Education sponsored by the Music Educators National Conference.

Anne is particularly interested in developing the self‐regulation and social‐emotional skills of young children. She was invited to share her work at the National Training Institute Addressing Young Children with Challenging Behaviors. She has been a frequent trainer and presenter across the country, including conference presentations for the National Center for Parents as Teachers, National Association for Music Education, ZERO TO THREE, Division of Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children, NAEYC Professional Institute, Head Start's national organization, and the American Music Therapy Association. Her research on music to support early language was published in the International Journal for Research in Music Education. She is the author of the popular Baby Sing & Sign book series. Her music CDs for children won National Association of Parenting Products and Parent's Choice Honors awards.

Anne lives in Kansas City, Missouri with her husband and two furry dogs. When not on the job, she enjoys kayaking, snacking, and dancing to the song Uptown Funk in her kitchen. She believes the world would be a better place if everyone would just take an afternoon nap.