Small 'talk' gets message across
“And Kam has already copied a few things. He quickly picks up what’s what.”
Two-year-old Hayden Belte is one of the oldest children in the group and has become pretty adept at his signs. He began Baby Signing but was forced to take a break for a few months after suffering meningitis – but the youngster is now back on track.
“He picks things up very quickly,” says his mum Carrie Waldron, aged 24, who has recently moved from Longbridge to Bromsgrove but comes back for the group.
“Both his signing and his speech are really good for his age and he loves interacting with the other children,” adds Carrie who works in a store and is studying to be a nurse.
Little Daniel Cutler-Young has two parents at the session – mum Jacqui Cutler, a 41-year-old administration assistant and dad Andrew Young, a 44-year-old Royal Mail driver.
Daniel, who is two, has been attending the group since September, usually with his mum.
“I think children can become frustrated when they cannot communicate and it really helps that he can sign,” says Jacqui. “And he can do quite a bit now.”
His dad adds: “I have really seen the difference even in such a short time.”
TINYTalk Toddlers aims to help children build communication skills as they begin to learn to speak, says Claire Berwick, TinyTalk teacher for South West Birmingham and North Worcestershire.
“It is about helping the children to develop both speech and signs at the same time,” she says. “They learn the words at the same time as the sign. This enables them to express themselves and to communicate with other people.” The TinyTalk Toddlers session is very structured with a series of short sharp bursts of activities. One minute the children are acting out Incey Wincey Spider, then they are learning the signs for animals and a few minutes later they are busy on a bear hunt.
All of the activities aim to help the children develop a range of skills including understanding words and enunciating them, says Claire.
“It all goes hand in hand,” she says. “They are learning words and signs but they are also very active and are learning to interact with other children and adults.”
TinyTalk Toddlers has recently been developed as an older version of TinyTalk Baby Signing which was launched seven years ago and now has 125 teachers working with more than 6,000 children nationwide.
Claire began teaching her own children, five-year-old Stephen, four-year-old Georgia and 23-month-old Dominic, to sign from a very early age.
From this initial interest, she took up teaching baby signing five years ago and has launched TinyTalk Toddlers in Alvechurch and Northfield over the past few weeks.
“Many of the parents coming here also came to Baby Signing so they are building on what they have already done,” she says. “But for others this is a new experience.
“There is a lot more interaction and involvement from children in the older group which is for children aged between 18 months and pre-school.”
* Details of local classes can be found on the www.tinytalk.co.uk website or by calling Claire on 0121 680 1347.
