JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Children at The Learning Experience in Mandarin are communicating through sign language as early as 6 months old.
“They start with about 12 words in that infant and toddler program and then we roll out more words as they get older and each month, we do work on monthly themes," Center Director, Jordan Lavender said.
Lavender says studies show the benefit of sign language at an early age are high IQs, accelerated speech and emotional development, improved muscle memory, and a larger vocabulary.
“Especially with infants and toddlers they’re nonverbal so this is a way for them to communicate before they actually learn to speak and that eliminates a lot of things like frustration," Lavender said.
Teachers like Dylani Gousman work with kids daily on their signing.
“To start off I do more of the familiar signs so, this is dad, this is momma, eat is one that they all know. I taught them to change diapers so it's a lot of signs that they know and easy to catch on to," Gousman said.
Gousman says she sees firsthand how quickly and effective this new trend is.
“It’s very easy for kids to grasp a lot of kids often pick it up faster than speaking because they can show you what they want a lot of times a kid will point to something and say more so instead of saying it’s easier for them to do instead of speaking if they don’t know the word so I think that’s pretty cool," Gousman said.
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