foreign language

Yes I know, I teach a lot already to the kids with us doing soccer practices and games, studying ancient history and basic world geography, math, phonics, language arts, music, and art among other things. So why on EARTH would I choose to take on yet another subject for the girls to tackle? Its quite simple actually.

My Kimmy has a mild speech delay, and is still having trouble communicating clearly with the rest of us sometimes. Also, Jordan has hit that place in life when my girls tend to want to say more than they can actually verbalize, and it causes a great deal of frustration and leads to some fun little temper tantrums that I absolutely despise in toddlers LOL So, we teach some sign language for basic signs starting as soon as they can begin trying to flap their arms intentionally. We teach basics like "milk" and "eat" and "sleep" along with "more" and a few other basics (some you just don't need to bother with, I swear the word NO is the first one my kids seem to master with clarity and meaning LOL) Well, my older girls have been watching me work with Kimmy and JoJo on some signs to expand a little more, and have asked to learn more signs as well. SO, Scott and I discussed it and we agreed that I should go ahead. I did some looking around, and at the suggestion of a fellow homeschool mom in my church ward, I decided to purchase the "Signing Time" DVDs, or as many as we can afford. This weekend, I am planning to make this purchase for the girls. They can watch one daily to give me a few minutes to take a shower or do other chores that they usually get in the way during (like dishes lol or a phone conversation with an old friend that I've recently gotten in contact with again) Since I am *fairly* confident in my own sign language, I just need to brush up, I won't need to watch the DVDs with the girls every time, just the first one or two times to jog my memory hopefully.

Also, with my doing sign language with the kids, perhaps it will help me to regain my language problems from the stroke I had earlier this year. I'm at a place where I'm willing to try almost anything to get that back to where it was. I'm sure that it can't hurt, and it may also help with my hand function on my right side a bit so that I'm not dropping things quite so much.