Watching

As I read through this assignment I began thinking of many different activities and topics I am interesting in exploring.

My first notes looked like this:

• sign language/baby sign language
• language confusion/bilingualism/multilingualism
• Italy
• dairy farm
• food in books

Let me explain this varied list.


I have a 13 month old hearing child that I teach sign language.  I also speak Spanish and it is my hope that my daughter will be multilingual at a young age. My husband only speaks English so it falls to me to teach Spanish. I have not spoken Spanish with her as much as I had planned, it is my second language and English just comes more naturally if I am not around other Spanish speakers. So, needless to say, I have a huge interest in bilingualism and how children learn and communicate, hence my first two bullet points. 

Next, I have a love affair with Italy. I love everything I read, watch and listen to about Italy. I think the culture, people, food, way of life, land and language are amazing. However, I have never visited. I hope to travel there someday, though I always say that it is probably good I haven't gone yet because I may not come back! I love to read memoirs, nonfiction, fiction and travel books about Italy. I enjoy watching movies set in Italy. So when thinking of things I would like to learn more about Italy topped the list. 

Dairy farm comes from my interest in dairy goats. I currently have 9 LaMancha does. I have had goats my entire life and showed for 10 years in 4-H and open shows. I hope to share the showing experience with my daughter someday. I do not do as many things with the goat milk as I would like but hope to do more cheese, yogurt and soap making in the future. I collect children's goat books and love learning about those that have been able to make dairy goat farming a way of life. 

Lastly, I made a lot of notes on how food plays a prominent role in many books. I seem to be drawn to fiction and nonfiction titles that deal with food. As I was thinking of this topic I also realized that food seems to be closely connected to family and emotions in the novels.

By exploring my interests I was able to gain some insight into myself and the world in which I live. Daily life is so busy that it is easy to fall into routines and forget to look up now and then to see what is passes by or through your experiences.  Callison (2006) writes that, "Informal learning involves the lifelong process by which every individual acquires and accumulates knowledge, skills , attitudes, and insights from daily experiences and exposure to the environment--at home, at work, and at play." By simply observing my daughter I have learned so much about language acquisition, physical development and emotional maturity. Taking this informal knowledge and applying some inquiry skills I can increase my formal information base. 

As I considered all of these interests I decided to spend this inquiry project on baby signing. My daughter already has extensive spoken and signing vocabularies. However, I just teach her the signs I am familiar with to help her communicate. Signing with babies has become quite popular in recent years and parenting magazines often feature articles of how to sign with your child. I often get questioned about why and how I sign with her. I have a background in child development and have seen the benefits of signing with hearing children. However, I want to learn more about "what the experts say" so that I can give better answers and also advocate for teaching children to sign. 

Now onto formulating and narrowing all of the questions that come to mind when I think of the phrase "baby sign language."