My Smart Hands With Crystal

Some may think that signing my baby up for sign language before he is six months old sounds insane… but after just one class with Crystal this past weekend, I’m confident that making the decision to sign Baby M up for sign language classes was an incredibly smart idea. I’ve seen proof that by communicating with your baby via sign language, it will allow babies to communicate their needs before they can speak. As a result, this will reduce frustration for parent and child, accelerate verbal development (since you speak and sign at the same time), and enhance bonding.
Thanks to my friend Lori for setting up a small group series of level 1 classes, I met Crystal Ashworth, the owner and certified My Smart Hands Instructor, this past week. She was professional and very patient with our group (which included smart asses such as my husband and babies from 5 months — 9 months in age, some of them on the fussy side during class). I love the set-​up of the class which incorporates plenty of repetition, songs, trick to remember certain signs, a manual to follow along, and a CD. We’ll need to practice at home, but we already walked away with a handful of ASL signs that we use daily such as more, eat, thank you, please, milk, all done, dog, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, girl, boy, baby, happy, grumpy, and the letters of the alphabet.
In addition, I just found that there is an entire My Smart Hands dictionary available online with videos to show parent and baby how to sign certain words. I’m already looking forward to class number two and hopefully advancing to level 2 classes eventually as well!