Mama Pea Pod: {Baby Signs Giveaway!}

As promised, a fabulous giveaway to celebrate passing the '150 fans' mark on the MPP facebook page!

If you've been following along for a little while now, you may already know how much I LOVE baby signing with my little peas!

Sweet Pea signing 'more'

My girls are both extremely verbal for their ages, and I credit this to baby signing.

Research shows that using baby signs reduces crying and frustration because babies can tell you exactly what they need; scaffolds language development and results in wider vocabularies; and increases IQ in the long term. (Check out the Baby Signs website to read about more benefits of baby signing!) And I can personally attest to the first two of those claims, at least!

Sweet Pea signing 'give me'

In addition, we found that it acted as a helpful bridge for Princess Pea between her first and second languages. For the first year of her life, Princess Pea only heard English spoken to her. Just after her first birthday, we moved to Hungary, and I went back to work. We hired a nanny for her who spoke only Hungarian.

Princess Pea signing 'bird'

At that time, she already had quite a number of spoken words under her belt (about 20), in addition to many signs (over 30). She was used to being able to communicate with us about a variety of things - from expressing her basic needs to 'discussing' things she saw in her environment. We weren't sure how she would adjust to suddenly being thrown into a Hungarian-only environment when she had never heard it before.

Princess Pea signing 'milk'

So we taught the nanny a few of her signs to look out for - milk, eat, drink, diaper change, etc. - the essentials for communicating basic needs. We found that these signs were a great way to connect the two languages for Princess Pea. The nanny was able to understand Princess Pea's requests, and when the nanny said a word in Hungarian and signed it, Princess Pea recognised the sign and was able to connect it to the English word she already knew. In just a few weeks Princess Pea began speaking Hungarian words as well as English (and the nanny was avidly learning more and more signs!).

By the time she was 2 years old, she was unquestionably bilingual - she knew both languages equally well, and was very advanced for her age in both languages! (Sorry, a bit of parental bragging there!
;-p While I'm at it, have I also mentioned that Sweet Pea has a spoken vocabulary of about 55-60 words at the age of 15 1/2 months? I'm telling you, baby signing really works!)

I am a huge fan of baby signing and highly recommend it to every new parent I meet.

Princess Pea signing 'eat'

Sounds great? It is! And, here is some more great news!

Linda Acredolo, one of the original baby signs researchers, co-author of the book, Baby Signs: How To Talk To Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk, and co-founder of Baby Signs and the Baby Signs Institute, has generously offered a Baby Signs Complete Starter Kit (pictured at the top of this post) to one lucky Mama Pea Pod reader!

Here's how to enter:

1) If you haven't already done so, become a follower of Mama Pea Pod on Google Friends Connect, Facebook, Twitter, and/or Networked Blogs (each counts as an individual entry, so you can enter up to four times!)

2) After doing part 1 above, leave a comment below for each entry with your email address to contact you if you win - while you're at it, feel free to share what games or activities you do with your baby to stimulate language development!

Entry is open to residents of the Continental US only (i.e., not Hawaii), and closes on July 20th. The winner will be chosen through Random.org.

Good luck in the draw, and happy signing!