Baby signing - how to keep this going at nursery?

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DS has been going to baby signing class since he was 5months old & can do a few signs (and understand a heap more).

He's about to start nursery for 3 days & I want to keep the signing going & also tell the nursery what he can do so his communication isn't ignored.

Anyone else had this situation? How did you tell the nursery nurses about how to do the signs? I don't know it writing it down is best or if I need to make up something visual.

I'm also thinking a select number would be best rather than trying to give them a crash course of all the ones we know!!

They will just do it with them anyway. No need to worry.

Some nurseries will do signing. Talk to the nursery staff, teach the signs if necessary.

You need to find a nursery that offers signing as part of the curriculum.
Unless your child's key worker will be with them an awful lot, it isn't very realistic to expect enough nursery staff to learn the signs.

Unless he is hearing impaired, try not to worry, babies are very good at communicating when their needs aren't being met and nursery staff are usually trained and experienced. I don't think it's reasonable to expect staff to keep up the signing unless of course he is hearing impaired, and if he is then I think you should perhaps look into a signing nursery.

Will you be at work whilst he's at nursery? There's a mum at ds's nursery who comes in once/twice a week to teach all the babies (and the staff!) signing, might that be an option?

Yeah I'll be at work pootles2010 so that won't be an option.

I didn't think it was unreasonable to pass on a few signs (one of the staff said they used to have a girl who did signing) but maybe I'll just pass on the signs he can do so that he's understood (and therefore happy).

Also, he's not hearing impaired. We started signing class as a social thing for him to interact with other children & mainly for the song-singing too. It's been great & DS loves that we know what he means when he signs so that's why I'm keen to keep it up as he's still a while away from speaking!

I'm a childminder and have received training in makaton, many nursery workers will have received training as well. just write down the signs that he makes regularly, and the ones you would like the staff to carry on doing. It's not an unrealistic expectation.

If the nursery already offers this just check that they are used to the same signs as your baby. They should be but there can be differences so it's worth checking.

It would be unrealistic to expect a whole group of staff to learn it from scratch but this wouldn't be the case if they have already offered it for another child.

My DD's key worker was really interested in her signing and asked me to show her some of the common ones. I didn't stand there giving her a half hour lesson or anything, I just showed her a couple of new ones every couple of days, starting with the ones DD used, and then a few she understood but didn't use, and also one that DD had made up for her comforter. Probably total no more than about 15 signs. It wasn't a problem, nursery were very keen to support in this way. DD also not hearing impaired by the way.

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Well, I've started off with 5 main signs for now - 2 of which DS can do. Nursery key worker seems fine with that.

As he starts adding more signs to his repertoire I'll just mention this to them then. Easier to drip-feed 1 or 2 new signs a month than a whole bunch in one go!