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baby moon
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~ for birth and life ~
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For Families
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Fun Fun!! Dory is really enjoying your classes. Thanks so much for offering active classes for toddlers and preschoolers--they help us get away from only gymnastics or dance.
-Melissa M., 10/07 |
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Gesture Paves the Way for Language Development
http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby/gestureresearch.html
Sign, Baby, Sign!
http://www.handspeak.com/tour/kids/index.php?kids=signbabysign
Can Baby Sign Language Delay Speech?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8060750
Children with Special Needs Using Sign Language
http://www.babies-and-sign-language.com/special-needs.html
Kindermusik Sign & Sing
(Weekday Sessions)
WeeHands Signing Babies
(Saturday Sessions)
See our Families Calendar for upcoming dates, and register now to reserve your place in these popular classes!
KindermusikTM Sign & Sing
Learn while you play! This KindermusikTM class uses songs, toys, and loving playtime to teach over 50 useful signs babies and toddlers can use to communicate their needs. This early communication tool enhances your child's long-term learning abilities and reduces frustration and tantrums as expressive language skills develop.
Our exclusive 10 week series includes five weeks of Sign & Sing A and five weeks of Sign & Sing B. Take home materials for A include a Kindermusik CD, a shaker instrument, diaper bag flip cards with pictures of adult and child versions of signs, a DVD glossary of 60 signs, and a family activity book. Take home materials for B include another family activity guide, animal sign flashcards, and Signs, Songs & Rhymes--a music video DVD.
Build your child's language and communication skills, develop fine motor skills, and enhance long-term learning abilities in this fun musical setting!
To learn more about the benefits of using sign language with your baby, please see Signing with Your Baby: Information for Parents (above).
Class Details:
Advance registration required, class limited to 10 participants. For ages 6 months - 3 years. Special needs babies and tots also welcome.
Sign & Sing A + B: 10 week session, $165 including take home materials described above.
Sign & Sing A only (contact us for availability): 5 week session, $85 (including the take-home materials described above for A).
Tuition discount of 15% applies for siblings who also wish to join the class, contact us for details.
Instructor: Christie Pabin, certified KindermusikTM teacher.
See Family Class Calendar for upcoming dates.
WeeHands 'Signing Babies' Saturday & Evening Classes
Why wait to communicate? Long before your baby can speak, he or she has the ability to understand speech and has the desire to communicate. WeeHands uses songs and fun, motivating, language-based activities to help parents successfully teach signs to their babies. This early communication tool enhances your child's long-term learning abilities and reduces frustration and tantrums as expressive language skills develop.
Benefits of signing with your baby include reduced frustration for baby and parents, enhanced attachment, expanded vocabulary and language skills, higher IQ's, and increased self-esteem. Baby sign language gives you a window in your baby's world!
The WeeHandsTM classes and workshops are based on Joseph Garcia's award-winning Sign with Your BabyTM program. Baby Moon is excited to offer Weekend Workshops as well as Saturday Sessions of Signing Babies I and Signing Babies II. To learn more about the benefits of using sign language with your baby, please see Signing with Your Baby: Information for Parents (above).
Class Details:
Advance registration required, class limited to 10 participants. For ages 6 months - 3 years. Special needs babies and tots also welcome.
Signing Babies Weekend Workshop: One-time, 45 minute workshop designed as an introduction to Baby Signs. $15. Space is limited, advance registration is required.
Signing Babies I: This 4 week series covers around 75 signs you can use with your baby in every day situations. Includes a take-home manual with pictures of all signs taught, lyrics to 6 songs, home activities and suggestions, and information on early language development. $60.
Signing Babies II: This 4 week series continues your baby's learning, covering over 75 signs you can use with your baby in every day situations. Includes a take-home manual with pictures of all signs taught, lyrics to 6 more songs, home activities and suggestions, and information on early language development. $60.
Instructor: Cindy Downey, Certified WeeHandsTM Teacher.
See Family Class Calendar for upcoming dates.
Village
(Newborns - 18 mos)
Sign & Sing
(6 mos - 3 yrs)
Our Time
(18 mos - 3 yrs)
Kindermusik Village
Imagine your child swinging softly in a blanket or dancing with you around a maypole. Village provides a delightful environment unlike any other! Through a unique blend of multi-level activities that includes creative movement, vocal play, object and instrument exploration, and a colorful literature component, your baby’s growth and development are stimulated and all of his senses engaged.
Kindermusik Village, for babies and toddlers newborn to 18 months, incorporates the most current research on early childhood development and provides families a special place for learning and connecting with other parents and babies through music and movement. High quality, professionally created class and take home materials include Kindermusik Foundations of Learning, insights based on current research that educate parents about their baby's unique development.
Nurture the bond between you and your child through intentional touch, interactive dance, and musical play. Introduce your baby to a world of joyful music making with your Baby Moon community.
Village Class Details:
Advance registration required, class limited to 12 participants. For ages newborn - 18 months.
16 week series, $185 (includes take home materials).
8 week series, $95 (includes take home materials).
Instructor: Christie Pabin, certified KindermusikTM teacher.
See Family Class Calendar for upcoming dates.
Kindermusik Our Time
Can you sound like an elephant? Or hop like a bunny? Our KindermusikTM class encourages your child to uncover an engaging musical world while building confidence, self-control and communications skills. Singing, imitating sounds, rhyming and object identification foster language skills. Creative movement to various musical “moods” develops a sense of balance, timing and spatial awareness. Listening and turn-taking encourage blossoming social skills.
Our KindermusikTM classes recognize that your child needs the freedom to try and experience new things, along with the assurance of your support. Parent and child will enjoy singing, moving, listening and interacting socially, and playing simple instruments. Exploration Time encourages a child's discovery of specially designed instruments, textures, sounds and movements; language skills are fostered with singing, sound imitation, and vocal play; Music & Movement Story Time encourages emergent literacy skills; and creative dancing affirms a child's urge to move.
Arts education at this preschool level helps to build creativity, self-confidence, curiosity, self-expression, social skills, and cooperation--a strong foundation for successful learning in school. Promote the total development of your child through music, movement, and literacy, while we make joyful music as a community!
Our Time Class Details:
Advance registration required, class limited to 12 participants. For ages 18 months - 3 years.
15 week series, $175 (includes take home materials).
Instructor: Christie Pabin, certified KindermusikTM teacher.
Coming in Fall, 2008! Watch the Family Class Calendar for dates.
Our new early language program gives your little one an opportunity for Spanish language immersion as we sing, read, and play in a fun, relaxed atmosphere. Children will hear the language, and learn spanish words and phrases through songs, dramatic play, books, and free play. Parents will learn how to integrate Spanish into their child's daily life. We'll build a strong foundation for language fluency from the earliest ages, and help our babies and preschoolers to be creative, confident, and respectful of other cultures--opening the door to communication with more people in more places, and giving children skills to interact competently in an increasingly interdependent world community.
Research shows that the window of opportunity for easy language acquisition is between infancy and the age of 10. A young brain forms neural connections with each new language that it learns. Getting children started in a second language program at an early age has been shown to help establish a higher level of fluency later on, and to improve communication skills in their own native language. Studies show that over the long term, children who participate in language immersion programs from an early age perform better in all of their academic subjects, increase their scores on standardized tests, and broaden their career opportunities.
Our little ones naturally have a high level of curiosity and are very receptive to learning about other cultures. Our early language immersion program offers your child an opportunity to experience a new language in a meaningful, real-life context, with real people--not videos--to facilitate learning and build community in an open-ended, creative context.
Class Details:
Spanish speaking and non-spanish speaking families welcome. Advance registration required, class size is limited.
Hola Bebitos: This 6 week seres is designed for little ones ages 6 mos - 2 years.
Hola Ninos: This 8 week series is designed for preschoolers 3 - 5 years.
Watch our Family Class Calendar for 2008 session dates!
Hop, skip, and jump through Coach Tim's fun activities as we lay the groundwork for strong self-esteem, confidence, discipline, and school achievement through physical activity! This new series class teaches gross motor skills, coordination, socialization, and balance in an active setting designed just for our littlest kiddies.
Advanced registration required, class limited to 10 participants. For ages 2 - 4 years. 6 week series, $60.
Instructor: Tim Self, Director of Tots on Turf.
See Family Class Calendar for upcoming dates.
Boogie on, reggae baby! Our new Family Dance Night is an opportunity to step out with the kiddies and shake your groove thing. Socialize with other Baby Moon families while our DJ's spin some highly dance-able tunes. Afterwards it's straight to bed for the worn out little ones, while mom and dad kick back for a little R & R. Suggested Donation: $5 - $15.
DJ: Willie Eames.
B.Y.O.S. (bring your own sippie cup); non-alcoholic beverages only for grown-ups, please. Open to families of all ages!
See Family Class Calendar for upcoming dates.
Signing with Your Baby: Information for Parents
For Class Information click here.
Long before your baby can speak, he or she has the ability to understand speech and has the desire to communicate. All babies use gesture to try to communicate their needs--usually this takes the form of pointing, nodding, shaking their heads, waving bye-bye, or holding up their arms when they want to be held. Because these gestures are so limiting, they are usually accompanied by whining, crying, or screaming as babies and toddlers desperately try to communicate their needs and interests. Signing with your baby encourages a child's innate desire to communicate by teaching a more extensive gestural language that precedes, but does not replace, verbal language.
Babies as young as 7 months can recognize signs that parents and other caregivers produce. It's common around that age for your baby to start using gestures to communicate. Your baby is not born knowing how to communicate this way, she has learned it from watching you--from repetition and playful parent-child interactions.
The benefits of signing with your baby include increased attachment between parent and child, reduced frustration for baby and parents as expressive language skills develop over the first 2 years, and expanded vocabulary and language skills. Learning this gestural language is also good for baby's brain development, as it stimulates both the language centers and the visual processing centers of the brain. Other, long-term benefits include a greater interest in reading as children mature, higher IQ's (average of 12%), and increased self-esteem.
The baby sign language method is not a replacement for verbal skills and language acquisition. The most common concern from parents is the fear that learning to sign will delay speech in their baby. In fact, the research shows that babies who learn to sign actually develop speech earlier, and have a more extensive vocabulary, than their non-signing peers. When a baby learns to wave 'bye-bye,' for example, are we afraid that they will never learn to say 'bye-bye'? Of course not! With the baby sign language method, we always say the word when we sign it. Your baby has an innate desire to imitate your speech sounds, and she will take that next step as soon as she has the fine motor skills required for speech.
As with all infant and toddler milestones, there is a wide range of normal for speech acquisition. It is important to be patient with your child and to know that you are supporting communication and the development of language skills by signing--and speaking--with your baby.
We recommend beginning your baby sign language program around 6 months of age. When parents follow-through effectively at home with the signing techqniques learned in class, babies typically begin to sign back around 8 months of age. By 10-12 months babies are generally learning signs more rapidly. You might be surprised by what your baby wants to talk about!
If you've already missed the 6-8 month window, don't worry. Baby sign language is still appropriate and useful for typically developing older babies and young toddlers, up until the time that your child is communicating effectively with speech. This skill comes at different times for different kids. Our classes are open to children 6 months - 3 years of age.
Signing is also useful for older toddlers with speech delays, and is usually recommended by Speech / Language Pathologists as an important first step in the acquisition of effective communication skills and speech.
The Baby Moon baby sign language classes teach signs based on American Sign Language (ASL), so in addition to learning a temporary mode of communication you and your baby are also learning a real, standardized language that transfers, later, to other situations and to other people in your child's life.
Class Information: Please see listings on this page for KindermusikTM Sign & Sing and WeeHands Signing Babies I & II.
Click here for links to research articles and more information on signing with your baby.
From Baby Moon Moms:
"I am SUCH a convert to the value of signing! At this toddler stage, it has been an absolute lifesaver -- and they learn signs so quickly now! I am THRILLED that you are offering it and can't say enough about how important it is. When you have a demanding / spirited 16 month old, getting them to say 'please' when they are shouting for something feels like a small victory for socialization!"
-Lauren, Baby Moon Mom
"We started signing with our daughter at 6 months. At 7 months she signed 'more' for the first time--to tell me she wanted to share my glass of water [see photos]. Now at 14 months her verbal language is developing rapidly. Her signs have doubled her vocabulary at this age, allowing her to express more complex thoughts and talk about what is on her mind. I have been surprised by her fascination with butterflies, and impressed when she tells me she thinks it might rain--using word and sign combinations to make short sentences. I love that she can ask sweetly for more milk, or a drink of water, without the usual toddler whining and pointing--and the melting down that follows when no one understands. I am a huge fan of baby sign language, and I know that it is enhancing her learning and language skills."
-Anne, Baby Moon Mom
"Watching Violet use sign language was amazing! I was able to understand what she was thinking well before she was able to talk. Her grandparents loved it when we called because she was signing their names. How else would I have known, at 9 months, that she wanted to talk to Moogie and Doogie??"
-Kendra, Baby Moon Mom
