Product Description
It s Signing Time with Alex and Leah! From their magical animated treehouse, Alex (age 3), his cousin Leah (age 4) who is deaf, and host Rachel Coleman (Leah’s mom) teach beginning American Sign Language (ASL) signs in a fun and playful way. Volume 1 is a great first step into signing and teaches signs for many first words. Created for ages 1-8 but enjoyed by all! Available only on DVD. Close-Captioned. Approximate run time: 30 Minutes, plus special features. My Fir… More >>
I was extremely disappointed in this video. There are far better references out there to teach children. The quantity of signs provided was poor and the value for the cost was also poor. Do yourself a favor and buy one of the books Amazon has online – there are much better references available to teach your children than this video.
Rating: 1 / 5
My son loves these. I’m not quite as pleased. (We own the entire series.) I wish they would keep their focus on what they should be accomplishing in their videos: teaching kids to sign and providing songs that kids can sign. Sometimes (too often, actually) they loose focus and put in songs just because they want to show off their song writing skills (which are considerable, I must admit). However, if I’m looking for music, there is no shortage of options. I’m looking for signable songs, and I resent the fact that they can’t be bothered to put the minor (actually very minor) effort into their song writing that it would take to make their songs something that a young child has some likelihood of being able to sign. My son loves to sign Rachael’s songs, but only a few can reasonably be signed as stand-alones, by young non-verbal children. More can be partially signed along with the music. Many can be signed only if you are really quick. And some of them have no place at all on a signing video.
When I look at Rachael spelling out words that have no signs, I’m irritated. I wish she would just make up a sign, instead. As far as I can figure, there are tons of “regional” variations of signs, anyway. Why can’t she and her team make up some? They will become “standard” pretty soon if she does, anyway. Not everyone (probably just a small percentage) who buys children’s signing videos does so to communicate with the deaf community. I suspect most of us do it for our children, because they are young, or because they have a language delay or disability.
The existance of ASL is totally irrelevant to most of our lives, so why be strict about sticking to it? We want signs to help our young ones communicate. We want our children to learn English. ASL may be fun for older children to learn, but they don’t seem to be the ones this type of signing video is geared toward anyway. There is absolutely no reason for my language impaired child to get confused by ASL. He just needs signs as a way to say words. As he is learning to use sentences, they need to be English sentences, definitely not ASL ones. (For those who don’t know, ASL uses a different sentence structure and is very inappropriate for language delayed children who don’t need to communicate with the deaf community. Signs are a way to communicate words, but they are not ASL unless they are used in ASL “sentences.”) Signing Time does not actually teach ASL (they teach signs), but they do sign in ASL when talking and in songs (which isn’t a problem). But they make too big a deal about ASL. Who cares? The really big deal about these videos is the signs, which are used in ASL, but are not ASL. When my son was young, I didn’t know any better and I thought we needed ASL. Now, when I run across parents of young children with special needs who are under the same impression, it makes me mad. Why do we keep perpetuating the myth that ASL is something we want for our children? (Signing Time is guily of this, but they aren’t the only ones.) We go out searching for ASL videos, books, and classes, and we waste our time and our money.
Signing Time could also dump the frog! (Hopkins is in the later videos and serves absolutely no purpose. He’s not even cute. Stick to the kids, please.)
Yeah, I’m opinionated, but it is my money, and my son really NEEDS good signing videos.
Don’t let me stop you from buying these videos. We preorder every new one as soon as we hear that it will be available. We’ve been loyal customers for years and will remain so. I just wish I was getting something a little better. Sometimes when I complain about sign language videos, I say, “Beggers can’t be choosy.” But that’s really being too harsh when it comes to this series. Buy them all, or just watch them on PBS. It won’t be a waste of time.
Rating: 4 / 5
I thought I would try a different signing video then the one we own, My Baby Can Sign (it is totally scratched up from overuse by my daughter). Because of the great reviews I had high expectations of Signing Time. But, the production isn’t great and it doesn’t hold the attention of my 1 year old. He has zero intesest in watching it. This might be a good video for an older child or a child with speech delays. But, if you want to teach your baby to sign, this isn’t the video for you. My daughter learned to sign with the My Baby Can Talk video, and I am going to use that instead. I will just have to buy another copy.
I have seen several signing videos at this point and it is amazing to me the poor quality. Maybe the Baby Einstein series has given me high expectations? Its hard to believe that there isn’t several high-quality signing DVDs out there, or, for that matter, that Baby Einstein doesn’t have one (Baby Einstein Wordsmith aside).
Rating: 1 / 5
I found this video to be terrific, except for one thing. Basic manners were missing. Two words I want my kids to say or sign are “please” and “thank you”. I had to find signs for these words from other sources. I also noticed that on volumes 2 and 3 that these signs continue to be a no show. Other than that, I recommend it.
Rating: 4 / 5
I received this video as a baby gift. I was disappointed because there are only 18 signs on it! I was also disappointed that there are only two songs, one during the opening and one during the credits. I really liked the beautiful mommy, kids signing, and the two songs, but wanted more signs. I also felt there was too much time spent on each sign.
Rating: 2 / 5
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