Permata Aulad

Sign language for general use would be unusual to certain country or maybe citizens of some places. It is normally known to be used for the disable. BUT, recently had been widely used as a mean of communication amongst children, especially babies and those that develops late speech.

Wonderful isn't it? It does opens up new sets of minds to think of this method as an approach to encourage communication amongst children. Yes, and why NOT?

I used them, and I find it very amusingly good! My children loves Mr Tumble, and from there they learned lots of signings. I even tried it with my second son. Whenever he wants to eat, he would sign me the eating signing and at the same time he says, "Eat! Eat!" Well, it is a language. He is communicating. And with this method, makes it easier for him to convey the message clearly to me. He can now do lots of signings like crocodile, duck, cereal, drink, egg in a cup, etc.. etc.. and all thanks to Mr Tumble.

So, who is this Mr Tumble?
Mr Tumble appears in the Cbeebies TV Programme here in the UK called 'Something Special'. I would suggest highly that the show is shown in my country. I find it very good and useful. Eventhough it lasts for only about 10 minutes every day, I think that it is useful enough that children are learning lots of signings from him.

Mr Tumble or Justin Fletcher had recently received the 'Member of the Order of the British Empire' (MBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours for services to "children's broadcasting and the voluntary sector" from Queen Elizabeth. He was labelled as a communicator genius by many from England. I thought the same too. The method he uses are excellent!

So, what method is it?

This method is called the MAKATON. You can browse further for more information here. It uses the standard British signing language. It is practised almost in every nursery in England. Nursery teachers are all giving instructions and explaining things to the children with these signings. There are also some free resources in the website where you can download, print and practise them with your children.
All and all, there are lots of things one can explore from this. If you're doing research work, look into this method and see how it assists in child's language development. If you're a parent, you can learn them and maybe it could help you communicate further. If you're a teacher, maybe you can start implementing this with your young students.

One more thing that I feel great about this is that it helps you to communicate emotions out of your children. Expressing emotions can some time be very difficult for either parents or children. But using signings like MAKATON might make it easier. Example would be, 'please calm down', 'are you sad?', 'are we feeling happy today?', 'it's a great day isn't it?', 'I am very sad!', 'I feel very happy today!', etc.


To summarise this all up, if you need further information, do not hesitate to leave your comments here. I'd be more than happy to assist you with further information.

As a taste of what Mr Tumble is all about, enjoy this short clip:

Cbeebies - Something Special - Mr Tumble goes to school


p.a.m.z