Signing Time ~ Time to Vote!!

Okay, First of all, the Random Winner for the Signing Time DVD Family Feelings and Fun is MaybeMamma!!! This was chosen from random.org. And I seriously have no clue how to post it on here, but trust me, it's true.

Next here are three of my favorite posts. All you have to do now is vote for your favorite one by leaving a comment. This will go until Wednesday February 18th. 5pm MST.

First of all is the post from:

Ellinger Enquirer:

Pam, is giving away signing time dvd's. One of the ways to qualify is to write a blog entry about why I want to win!

As many of you know, Nathan loves to babble! Unfortunately, because of his jaw surgery, cleft hard and soft palates, and several other facial anomalies, he doesn't do much or take anything orally. Its thought by the doctors that when he underwent jaw surgery at 3 days old (since he stopped breathing in the NICU on the second day of his life because his jaw was too recessed), the he lost some feeling in his tongue. We are still working on him being able to close his mouth comfortably. At 13 months old now, Nathan's speech level is that of a 6-7 month old. He has yet to make any consonant sounds such as baa, mama, da da, etc. He hasn't reached the pointing stage either.

I've always been grateful that I was given this sweet little boy. He's had excellent medical care (for the most part) and I love Mary, our speech/feeding therapist. However, I'm not super mom and I have no idea or professional training on how to help Nathan talk. Its going to be a long process.

That's where Signing Time comes in. Santa brought Nathan a couple of Baby Signing Time dvds for Christmas. He LOVES to watch them with Ellie. He hasn't started doing the signs yet, but Ellie has and when I ask her to talk to Nathan with signs and words, she does. Ellie, who will be 4 on Sunday, is Nathan's best teacher. She loves it and because he wants to be just like her, Nathan loves it too.

When I'm home from work, I always try to pop on one dvd for the kids to watch. I don't get tired of the songs, and man, in one song it talks about eating and shows kids drinking! Nathan needs to see that (even if he could care less right now!) I think that Signing Time has some phenomenal products!

Ally In Wonderland:

And Pam over at The Bird Flock is doing a Signing Time giveaway, which I am SUPER excited about. I am working with my students on learning signs, right now we're signing our colors, letters, days of the week, and some animals. I will start months of the year soon, probably tomorrow. But why do I love Signing Time so much?? Because they're a wholesome company, and you all know, I am all about a wholesome company. I would much rather give my money to a small company with a good structure who's heart is in the right place than a multi-million dollar corporation because its convienent.

That being said, part of the giveaway is to write about why I want to win. I want to win for so many reasons, but all of them lead back to my kids (students). I am a huge supporter of sign langauge because of all the benefits it has, it helps so many of my students speak to me, even those who are developing verbal skills still sign when I can't understand them.

Case in point, #6 has no verbal language skills. He verbalizes, but he only makes one sound that is supposed to represent the hundreds of letter sound combinations that make up the English language. He has a Big Box of Words, but is still really rusty and BBoW can't go with us everywhere, being big and boxy-ish. He also has a bit of trouble with it since it is computerized and has literally hundreds of words, he just can't move fast enough to keep up in conversation.

But he signs.

And signing is portable and pretty easy to learn. Sure, there are arguments that signing is not a good skill for generalization, as not everyone knows sign, but please, my kiddo's can talk to others on the playground and everyone knows what the basics are! They can talk! They can interact!!

So if my kids are so great, why the Signing Time DVDs?? Because I'm only so good. I only know so many signs and have a ton of learning to do myself, so everyone would benefit from seeing Rachel's face singing to us on a daily basis. :)

So hopefully this post will help me win the contest. I'm already a follower of her blog (I'm under Special friends) but I don't have Facebook or Twitter, so here I am Pam! This is my entry!!

Whatever To Us:

I'm not sure how I ended up on this blog but Rhett's mom is hosting a blog giveaway for Signing Times products right now. There are many ways to enter the drawing, but one was to write a blog post about why you want to win...so here goes:

Our family are HUGE fans of Signing Times! We started teaching Dom signs at about 9 months. By the age of 2, Dom had over 300 signs and about as many vocalizations. We quickly learned that with our son, teaching sign didn't replace speech but actually encouraged it. Now at the age of 4 1/2 and in his 2nd year of preschool, Dom communicates mostly by vocalizations but he relies on signing to get his point across sometimes. Typically, he signs the most in new situations or with new people. Which brings me to why I would love to win these products...

Dom starts Kindergarten this July-and while his current classroom teacher is fluent in sign language, that isn't the case with his 'new' school where he will attend for 6 years. Having the opportunity to give his new teachers/therapists a preview of his communication through these videos would be awesome. It would allow the adults working with Dom 'insider' information so to speak about Dom before he even steps foot into the classrooom. And just think how many kids would benefit from that information in years to come.

One of the things that we feel strongly about as Dom's parents is that our job is to remove as many obstacles as possible for Dom as he goes through life- just like we did for the girls but Dom requires a little more in depth analysis of every situation to make sure we aren't 'missing' a stumbling block. If we can help the people working with Dom understand what he's saying, we're removing a portion of the communication obstacle.

So there you have it- why I want to win this giveaway, not very elegant but I think I got my point across :) I encourage any parent, teacher, therapist, anyone who works with kids to check out this giveaway and enter if you think it would be beneficial to your world. I know it would be in mine-and I bet it would be in yours too :) Good luck everyone!

Also, I didn't get too many photos, so here are just three of my favorite ones, again,, leave a comment in the comment section as to who you think the craziest kid is.

I had to pick Jack, because well, Julie is the only other person I know who has actually willingly posted a picture of her son wearing her underwear....Besides me that is...


I loved this picture of Grayson. I hate fish, I think they smell and are just gross. So just the fact that Grayson is willing to lick a fish? Well that makes him pretty crazy in my book!


Jacob, wow, Jacob. Jacob reminds me of Rhett in this picture. Nuff' said.


So there you have it. Vote away my friends!!