Along with our English and Spanish storybooks, the Unicorn Jazz brand is adding yet another language to its magically adventurous series – American Sign Language!
Why Choose American Sign Language (ASL) as a Second Language?
A widely desirable option among monolingual households looking to add another language to their children’s reading experience, ASL is a beneficial learning tool for all babies, toddlers, and young ones born either with or without hearing impairments. While this fact may surprise many parents of children with fine hearing, learning ASL at a young age can actually help enhance communication skills during development through symbol recognition, visual cues, and effective gesturing. Most importantly, like all languages and forms of communication, ASL is easier for children to grasp and understand the earlier they start!
Story Time with Unicorn Jazz & Friends – in ASL!
It’s no secret among parents and educators that read-a-louds and story times provide a smoother language learning experience for children’s brain development. We don’t just sit down and read to our kids because it’s what we believe a model parent should do, we do so because it is a fun and effective way to teach our kids literature and comprehension skills as part of our own subtle homeschool curriculum. This same concept is no different when it comes to ASL story times which can be quite immersive to children of all ages and hearing capacities.
For example, let’s take a look at a couple of Unicorn Jazz stories told through both, oral narration and an ASL guide:
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ASL Storytime with Unicorn Jazz – Book 1
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Unicorn Jazz: Bee-ing Happy – ASL Reading
Hope you enjoyed our ASL tales! And remember, learning and teaching our kids ASL can be as simple as watching a few helpful videos and basics online, like the following tutorial on how to sign the word “unicorn”: