"Zen Cohen" wrote in message
...
Who's tried it and what do you think of it? Is it something you can learn
to do effectively on your own or do you recommend taking a 'workshop.'
(eg:
http://www.imaginationsigners.com/index.htm)

TIA.


Our daughter has Down syndrome so we started sign language early because we
knew she'd have speech delays due to poor oral/motor strength.

Start with a sign language book for children, Sesame Street puts out one
that features the woman from the show who's deaf doing the signs. It
concentrates on verbs and nouns that you'd typically use with a very young
child (nouns like blocks, ball, car, and various animals, verbs like sit,
stand, eat, sleep; miscellaneous words like more, down, up, etc).

Our daughter is still pretty much unintelligible (age 5) to most people but
using her signs we can tell what she is talking about most of the time along
with her rudimentary spoken approximations.

Leigh