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Signing the ABCs, working on articulation

There are a variety of prompts to help children learn speech sounds through tactile cues. One method, PROMPT, requires training and certification. I have never had this training.

I have however, developed some of my own visual and tactile cues to teach placement for speech sounds.

Every day I sign and sing the alphabet with my self-contained classes. Recently, I began bringing the signs up to my lips in order to emphasize my mouth movements for each sign.

This is what I’ve developed (movie is only 23 seconds long):

I’m sure it’s not perfect, but at this point it works very well for me. Notice the hand movement for sounds that are longer (such as /s/) and the bounces for multi-syllabic letters (/w/). I lower my hand for the /k/ and /g/ sounds, because these sounds are made in the back of the tongue and touch my lips for the lip sounds (/m/, /p/, /b/, etc.).

Have fun signing and speaking. And don’t be afraid to learn some new things!

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5 Comments

  1. I would love to teach my kids to sign.

  2. That’s awesome. My son (when he was two and three) benefitted greatly from tactile signs for some of his troublesome speech sounds, but the therapist only had a few and I cannot for the life of me recall any of them right now. I do remember doing it however.

    Having the whole alphabet will greatly assist your babes, I’m sure of it.

    On a totally different note, I had always pictured you with long blond hair. Seriously. Yep, I pictured you as a non-cartoon version of your mast-head. So in the video, I was like “whose the brunette?” It took me a minute to put all the pieces together.

  3. Very cool! Signing is such an important part of so many lives.

  4. This is GREAT! We had an ST use prompt with Brady, but he is so orally defensive he didn’t like it ๐Ÿ™‚

  5. I came over from Cheri’s blog (Lia’s Mom). I love all of your ideas. I really, really need to learn the ABCs in sign b/c my daughter is really showing she is ready to learn the ABCs but she just can’t say them. She has unrepaired, complete cleft palate. She just turned 4. Long story short, we had to get her heart stable first after she came home a year ago. We’re *hopeful* her heart will be stable enough for the palate surgery this spring. In the meantime, she is so smart and eager but does get frustrated. She has about 50 signs now. She learns them as soon as she sees them (me, I need a bit more practice). ๐Ÿ™‚ Do you have any suggestions besides star*fall for seeing them online?

    If you have time โ€ฆ if not I understand. roomforatleastonemore (dot) wordpress (dot) com

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