Two New Videos Show Little Ones how to Communicate Before They can Speak

From: PR Newswire (Press Release) - 26 Nov 2002

Signing Time Videos are a Great Gift Choice for Parents, Babies and Toddlers

DRAPER, Utah, Nov. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Parents have two new videos to help their babies and toddlers communicate as early as nine months -- helping to reduce tantrums, enhance cognitive development and broaden vocabulary skills. In response to the tremendous success of its first video, "Signing Time: My First Signs," Two Little Hands Productions has released two new videos, "Playtime Signs" and "Everyday Signs." "My First Signs" is a top-selling sign language video on Amazon.com.

The videos, which are appropriate for children aged 0-5, are a perfect gift idea, especially for children under three who are still developing their language skills. Unlike other signing videos that teach parents how to teach their children, "Signing Time" speaks directly to the kids. Featuring Leah, age 5, and Alex, age 4, each video demonstrates signs through delightful animation, original music and signing children, infants and parents.

In "Playtime Signs" and "Everyday Signs" youngsters Alex and Leah return to their treehouse to show little ones even more ways to communicate through sign language. The two cousins make learning signs fun and easy.

"Playtime Signs" adds 30 new signs and phrases to help children identify play things, such as train, doll, bike, and bear and signs that can help reduce playtime conflicts, including please, share, my turn, and sorry. The video combines playful animation with real-life interactions and features four original songs written and performed by Leah's mom, Rachel de Azevedo Coleman, a musician in her own right. Coleman is also the narrator of all three videos.

In "Everyday Signs," Alex, Leah and their friends introduce 29 new words and phrases to help babies and toddlers interact with their world. Words like hungry, help, full, apple and ice cream let young children Two Little Hands Productions describe their wants and needs. The concept of related words is also introduced with hot/cold, wet/dry, day/sun, happy/laugh, boy/girl. Coleman wrote and performs four new memorable songs in this video.

The first "Signing Time" video, "My First Signs," was released in March 2001. To-date, thousands of copies have been sold through the company's Web site and Amazon.com with only word-of-mouth recommendations.

The "Signing Time" video series was born of the experience of Coleman who saw the benefits of signing with her deaf daughter, Leah, and Leah's hearing cousin, Alex. Reinforcing Coleman's personal experience, research has shown that hearing children who learn to sign before they can speak have fewer tantrums, higher IQ scores and larger vocabularies.

"We created these videos to help all children, hearing and disabled, better communicate before they have the full tools of speech," said Coleman. "We hope to improve the early communication skills for many, many children -- and let them have fun while they're at it!"

All three Signing Time videos, sold individually or as a set of three, are available on-line at www.signingtime.com . In a special introductory offer, a single VHS video can be purchased for $14.99 and a set of all three is available for $34.99. DVDs are also available for $19.99 each or $39.99 for the set of three. "Signing Time: My First Signs" is also available at www.amazon.com .

Source: Two Little Hands Productions

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