Many hearing people might take it for granted that, since dance is an activity usually done to music, it is something that only hearing people can do.
There are many connections between music, dance, and deaf people. Some of these connections can be very surprising.
In humans, there is a golf-ball sized area of the brain over the left ear that is designed to process speech and language. There is a separate area of the brain designed to process vibration. In deaf people, the speech area redesigns itself to also process vibrations. Therefore, it is possible that deaf people can experience music in a deep and rich way that hearing people do not appreciate.
In recent years, many school systems have installed special platforms designed to help deaf or hearing-impaired students to experience music more fully. In many cases these platforms are “sprung,” meaning they have heavy springs installed underneath. There are also large speakers turned face-down on the platforms. This combination of specially-arranged speakers, heavy springs and natural wood in the platforms makes for an excellent sound transmission system. Students sitting or standing on the platform can feel a wide range of vibrations through their feet or bodies, which aids in appreciation of the wide variety of sounds made by the different musical instruments.
These sprung platforms are also used to aid in teaching the deaf to dance. The students are able to feel the musical vibrations through the floor, so it is easier for them to follow the beat and the intensity of the music. Many professional dance troupes are known to use sprung floors in their studios to help the dancers soar into the air when they leap. Many performance spaces also utilize sprung floor surfaces.
As anyone who has been to a rock concert can tell you, if the music is loud enough the sheer sound pressure can be felt on the face, arms, or even move the clothing. This level of sound doesn’t stop at the skin, but penetrates through the entire body. The bass “thump” that is felt in the chest bypasses the ears completely! It is easy for anyone to move to music at this volume.
Dance and music are not reserved only for the hearing. Even now, deaf people can derive great pleasure from music and dance. As technology advances, deaf consumers may be able to add even more levels to their enjoyment of music.
Enjoy learning sign language and teaching it to your baby. The effects are amazing!
My Sign Language Hubpage
Monday, May 25, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Marlee Matlin - Actress and Advocate
Marlee Matlin was first known as the young deaf actress from the show “Children of a Lesser God.” She has appeared in many movies and on many television shows and has given inspiring and thought-provoking performances. But there’s a lot more to her than meets the eye.
Marlee Matlin was born in 1965 in Illinois. Like Helen Keller, Marlee was hearing until the age of about 19 months. She then suffered a high fever which resulted in her deafness. Her family dealt with the issue in a very straightforward manner: they treated her just like her hearing brothers. She had a speech defect because of her deafness. Her brothers came up with a clever explanation: They would tell people that she sounded different because she had been born in another country. Marlee played around the neighborhood like all the other kids and had as normal a childhood as many children who hear.
After visiting several distant residential schools for the deaf, the Matlins enrolled Marlee in self-contained and mainstreamed classes near home. She was a strong-minded little girl and wasn’t about to let her hearing loss limit her unnecessarily.
At 7, Marlee we going to summer camp and appeared as Dorothy in an after-school production of “The Wizard of Oz” with a mixture of deaf and hearing children.
As an adult, Marlee became a devoted advocate for raising public awareness of the physically challenged. She has campaigned for improved educational opportunities for the deaf and blind as well. She is a spokeswoman for the National Captioning Institute. She was instrumental in the passing of a law that requires all televisions 13 inches or larger to have built-in chips that enable closed captioning for the deaf. This opened a much larger world for deaf viewers, and has been called a “godsend” for the deaf.
Helen Keller and her teacher, and other pioneers like them, paved the way for Marlee Matlin and others like her who have helped make such great strides in education of the deaf and deaf-blind.
Teach your baby sign language. It's fun and the benefits are endless. Click here to learn how.
My new Hubpage with great photos of Helen Keller.
I am building a recession-proof online income. Would you like to join me?
Marlee Matlin was born in 1965 in Illinois. Like Helen Keller, Marlee was hearing until the age of about 19 months. She then suffered a high fever which resulted in her deafness. Her family dealt with the issue in a very straightforward manner: they treated her just like her hearing brothers. She had a speech defect because of her deafness. Her brothers came up with a clever explanation: They would tell people that she sounded different because she had been born in another country. Marlee played around the neighborhood like all the other kids and had as normal a childhood as many children who hear.
After visiting several distant residential schools for the deaf, the Matlins enrolled Marlee in self-contained and mainstreamed classes near home. She was a strong-minded little girl and wasn’t about to let her hearing loss limit her unnecessarily.
At 7, Marlee we going to summer camp and appeared as Dorothy in an after-school production of “The Wizard of Oz” with a mixture of deaf and hearing children.
As an adult, Marlee became a devoted advocate for raising public awareness of the physically challenged. She has campaigned for improved educational opportunities for the deaf and blind as well. She is a spokeswoman for the National Captioning Institute. She was instrumental in the passing of a law that requires all televisions 13 inches or larger to have built-in chips that enable closed captioning for the deaf. This opened a much larger world for deaf viewers, and has been called a “godsend” for the deaf.
Helen Keller and her teacher, and other pioneers like them, paved the way for Marlee Matlin and others like her who have helped make such great strides in education of the deaf and deaf-blind.
Teach your baby sign language. It's fun and the benefits are endless. Click here to learn how.
My new Hubpage with great photos of Helen Keller.
I am building a recession-proof online income. Would you like to join me?
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Kids and Sign Language - A Unique Perspective: Helen Keller
You may have heard of Helen Keller. She and her Teacher, Annie Sullivan, were quite famous in the early and middle parts of the twentieth century. Around 1902, Annie, aged twenty and herself partially blind, came to live with the Kellers just before Helen’s seventh birthday, to see if there was any hope of teaching Helen. At that time, Helen was more like a wild animal than a child: destructive, willful, unmanageable, and entirely unable to communicate. Within a few weeks’ time, by immersing Helen in a flood of fingerspelling, Annie penetrated Helen’s wall of ignorance and taught her that words mean things. This was the breakthrough that reopened the world to Helen.
Helen became famous for her astonishing achievements despite her challenges. She graduated from college, traveled the world with her beloved Teacher, was a friend of Presidents – and even learned to speak and to address large audiences, although she never heard her own voice.
What many people don’t know is that Helen Keller was born sighted and hearing. She was a “normal” baby until the age of approximately eighteen months. She then contracted a high fever that left her totally blind and deaf. As anyone who has been acquainted with an eighteen-month-old knows, they understand quite a lot of what they hear, and many of them are very verbal. So, by the time Helen lost her hearing she already had a good basis of language development. This undoubtedly served her well in her later endeavors.
I have what may be a unique perspective on kids and sign language. I had the privilege of performing the role of Annie Sullivan, Helen’s teacher, for more than ten years as part of an educational theatrical program. For four of those years, during the time my daughter was in third through sixth grade, she played the role of Helen with me. It was very exciting to share starring roles onstage with my own child!
My children are both sighted and hearing. I had already taught them fingerspelling and many of the formal signs, and had seen benefits in their social and linguistic development and in their school progress. However, the thing that really struck me during this remarkable time with my daughter was that sign language made possible a life of fulfillment, success and fame for Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan. Before Annie came to the Kellers, the family had regretfully discussed “putting Helen away” in an “asylum,” and had even visited a few of them. Back around 1900, asylums were horrific places, and certainly no place for a handicapped child. Annie was just graduating from the Perkins School for the Blind at the time, and had no other prospects for her own future. Annie and Helen were literally each other’s last and only chance. How differently so many lives would have turned out, if not for sign language!
Tidbit of the week: When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, what he was really trying to invent was a hearing aid. His wife was deaf.
Teach your child sign language. The benefits are endless. Click here.
My brand-new Hubpage with photos of Helen Keller.
I am building a recession-proof online income. Care to join me?
Helen became famous for her astonishing achievements despite her challenges. She graduated from college, traveled the world with her beloved Teacher, was a friend of Presidents – and even learned to speak and to address large audiences, although she never heard her own voice.
What many people don’t know is that Helen Keller was born sighted and hearing. She was a “normal” baby until the age of approximately eighteen months. She then contracted a high fever that left her totally blind and deaf. As anyone who has been acquainted with an eighteen-month-old knows, they understand quite a lot of what they hear, and many of them are very verbal. So, by the time Helen lost her hearing she already had a good basis of language development. This undoubtedly served her well in her later endeavors.
I have what may be a unique perspective on kids and sign language. I had the privilege of performing the role of Annie Sullivan, Helen’s teacher, for more than ten years as part of an educational theatrical program. For four of those years, during the time my daughter was in third through sixth grade, she played the role of Helen with me. It was very exciting to share starring roles onstage with my own child!
My children are both sighted and hearing. I had already taught them fingerspelling and many of the formal signs, and had seen benefits in their social and linguistic development and in their school progress. However, the thing that really struck me during this remarkable time with my daughter was that sign language made possible a life of fulfillment, success and fame for Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan. Before Annie came to the Kellers, the family had regretfully discussed “putting Helen away” in an “asylum,” and had even visited a few of them. Back around 1900, asylums were horrific places, and certainly no place for a handicapped child. Annie was just graduating from the Perkins School for the Blind at the time, and had no other prospects for her own future. Annie and Helen were literally each other’s last and only chance. How differently so many lives would have turned out, if not for sign language!
Tidbit of the week: When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, what he was really trying to invent was a hearing aid. His wife was deaf.
Teach your child sign language. The benefits are endless. Click here.
My brand-new Hubpage with photos of Helen Keller.
I am building a recession-proof online income. Care to join me?
Sunday, December 7, 2008
What Would Motivate a Baby to Sign?
Excellent video for teaching baby to sign.
There are many reasons why a hearing baby would want to sign. While a child is still preverbal, if he knows the signs for the things he wants, likes or needs, he will be eager to use the signs to help fulfill his needs. If he wants his favorite truck, for example, but can’t say the word yet, he will use the sign in order to get his truck!
Infants are born imitators, and quickly learn that pleasing the adults brings them extra love and attention. When baby perceives that Mommy wants her to sign, she will sign as early as she can in order to get that hug and kiss and hear Mommy’s delighted praise.
Sign should be used as a normal part of daily activities, and ideally, it should be started when the baby is very young. For example, when feeding or giving the baby his bottle of milk, sign “milk” several times without expecting a response. Be sure the baby sees the bottle, then sees and hears you speak the word and make the sign. Be ready to do a lot of repetition without expecting baby to sign back to you at first. This is a lot of information for an infant to assimilate!
When she has been exposed to many signs over a period of weeks or months, gradually the child will come to understand that the hand motions have meaning, and with consistent exposure she will learn that the sign, the object and the spoken word are all connected. This is the basis of “language” – understanding the connection between the abstract word or sign, and the physical object.
Use this technique with other everyday objects and people: Mommy, Daddy, dog, cat, ball, toy, cookie, bed. If necessary, make a list of the everyday items baby encounters, and have the signs ready so you do not have to interrupt normal activities to look up the sign. Anticipate signs for words that might excite your baby: Grandma, bird, swing, car. If you are planning a trip to the zoo, plan ahead with sign too, and have ready some animal signs: monkey, giraffe, bear, bird, and others.
Be patient when teaching sign to your baby. Before you know it, those little hands will sign back to you. It may take some learning on your part to recognize your baby’s version of a sign, but what a thrill it will be when the two of you start to communicate in sign!
Video to help you teach your baby to sign
I am building a recession-proof income online. Would you care to join me?
There are many reasons why a hearing baby would want to sign. While a child is still preverbal, if he knows the signs for the things he wants, likes or needs, he will be eager to use the signs to help fulfill his needs. If he wants his favorite truck, for example, but can’t say the word yet, he will use the sign in order to get his truck!
Infants are born imitators, and quickly learn that pleasing the adults brings them extra love and attention. When baby perceives that Mommy wants her to sign, she will sign as early as she can in order to get that hug and kiss and hear Mommy’s delighted praise.
Sign should be used as a normal part of daily activities, and ideally, it should be started when the baby is very young. For example, when feeding or giving the baby his bottle of milk, sign “milk” several times without expecting a response. Be sure the baby sees the bottle, then sees and hears you speak the word and make the sign. Be ready to do a lot of repetition without expecting baby to sign back to you at first. This is a lot of information for an infant to assimilate!
When she has been exposed to many signs over a period of weeks or months, gradually the child will come to understand that the hand motions have meaning, and with consistent exposure she will learn that the sign, the object and the spoken word are all connected. This is the basis of “language” – understanding the connection between the abstract word or sign, and the physical object.
Use this technique with other everyday objects and people: Mommy, Daddy, dog, cat, ball, toy, cookie, bed. If necessary, make a list of the everyday items baby encounters, and have the signs ready so you do not have to interrupt normal activities to look up the sign. Anticipate signs for words that might excite your baby: Grandma, bird, swing, car. If you are planning a trip to the zoo, plan ahead with sign too, and have ready some animal signs: monkey, giraffe, bear, bird, and others.
Be patient when teaching sign to your baby. Before you know it, those little hands will sign back to you. It may take some learning on your part to recognize your baby’s version of a sign, but what a thrill it will be when the two of you start to communicate in sign!
Video to help you teach your baby to sign
I am building a recession-proof income online. Would you care to join me?
Monday, November 17, 2008
How Will Signing with My Baby Be Beneficial?
Welcome to my second blog post on signing with babies! Today I'd like to outline the many benefits of using sign language with your baby.
Here is some video on babies learning to sign.
As your child learns signs and is able to communicate with you, the rest of the family and other adults, they will experience an increase in self confidence that will stay with them for life. Your child’s reading and spelling ability will accelerate. Through focused play, they learn to identify hundreds of objects and emotions.
Children who sign often experience increased interest in reading and books because they understand concepts so much better.With all the demands placed on everyone’s time today, children are getting less attention than ever before, sometimes to the point they are relying on video games and other “distractions” to influence them. Signing with your baby will allow you to connect with your child and make YOU their center of attention! It takes very little additional time, and adds plenty of fun into family time, too. All you need do is look up signs for the words commonly used with a baby: eat, milk, bear, love, sleep, etc.
Your child’s life will be infinitely easier. Signing with your baby stimulates brain activity and engages the visual cortex. This use of the visual modality, in addition to the auditory modality, enables your child to comprehend a lot faster than anyone else. That means your child will get a “head start” in life! Using sign language helps open additional and separate memory storage for cognitive development. By using visual, audio, and sensory stimulation, these multiple forms of learning allow for all types of learners to absorb information in a unique and global way. Your child’s verbal ability will increase. Studies show that children who use baby sign language can be months and even up to a full year ahead of children who did not sign.
Click here to learn more!
In my next post I will explore what might motivate a baby to use signs. Have a great day!
Here is some video on babies learning to sign.
As your child learns signs and is able to communicate with you, the rest of the family and other adults, they will experience an increase in self confidence that will stay with them for life. Your child’s reading and spelling ability will accelerate. Through focused play, they learn to identify hundreds of objects and emotions.
Children who sign often experience increased interest in reading and books because they understand concepts so much better.With all the demands placed on everyone’s time today, children are getting less attention than ever before, sometimes to the point they are relying on video games and other “distractions” to influence them. Signing with your baby will allow you to connect with your child and make YOU their center of attention! It takes very little additional time, and adds plenty of fun into family time, too. All you need do is look up signs for the words commonly used with a baby: eat, milk, bear, love, sleep, etc.
Your child’s life will be infinitely easier. Signing with your baby stimulates brain activity and engages the visual cortex. This use of the visual modality, in addition to the auditory modality, enables your child to comprehend a lot faster than anyone else. That means your child will get a “head start” in life! Using sign language helps open additional and separate memory storage for cognitive development. By using visual, audio, and sensory stimulation, these multiple forms of learning allow for all types of learners to absorb information in a unique and global way. Your child’s verbal ability will increase. Studies show that children who use baby sign language can be months and even up to a full year ahead of children who did not sign.
Click here to learn more!
In my next post I will explore what might motivate a baby to use signs. Have a great day!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Babies Can "Talk" At Ten Months Or Earlier?
Babies Can “Talk” At Ten Months Or Earlier?
Babies are smarter than most people think. Many babies can “talk” at ten months or earlier. Rather than coming into the world as a blank slate as many people may believe, babies come equipped with a readiness for language hard-wired into their brain.
On average, a baby with normal hearing will speak his or her first words at the age of about twelve months. Hearing babies who are taught sign language usually sign earlier than they begin speaking – sometimes by a margin of several months. A child can get immediate benefits from learning to sign: family members will be able to understand the child’s desires earlier, thereby causing less frustration for the child. This happy interaction between a baby and the family can lead to better bonding and greater confidence in the child, and help cut down on tantrums. Wouldn’t most families love to have a better-behaved baby and a happier home environment?
The benefits of signing with your baby can be far-reaching: Babies who sign often do much better socially, emotionally and in school.
Adults can sign to their baby from the very first day. A baby’s motor control is not fully developed, so a baby’s signing will look different than an adult’s signing. The child’s signs might be called “baby signs.” That’s fine, though – since there have been babies, mothers have gotten accustomed to their child’s “baby talk,” and a baby’s version of signing is really no different than “baby talk.” If the child continues to sign after learning to speak, the signing abilities will mature just like all his or her other abilities.
Interested in finding out how to get all these benefits? Click here!
...
Babies are smarter than most people think. Many babies can “talk” at ten months or earlier. Rather than coming into the world as a blank slate as many people may believe, babies come equipped with a readiness for language hard-wired into their brain.
On average, a baby with normal hearing will speak his or her first words at the age of about twelve months. Hearing babies who are taught sign language usually sign earlier than they begin speaking – sometimes by a margin of several months. A child can get immediate benefits from learning to sign: family members will be able to understand the child’s desires earlier, thereby causing less frustration for the child. This happy interaction between a baby and the family can lead to better bonding and greater confidence in the child, and help cut down on tantrums. Wouldn’t most families love to have a better-behaved baby and a happier home environment?
The benefits of signing with your baby can be far-reaching: Babies who sign often do much better socially, emotionally and in school.
Adults can sign to their baby from the very first day. A baby’s motor control is not fully developed, so a baby’s signing will look different than an adult’s signing. The child’s signs might be called “baby signs.” That’s fine, though – since there have been babies, mothers have gotten accustomed to their child’s “baby talk,” and a baby’s version of signing is really no different than “baby talk.” If the child continues to sign after learning to speak, the signing abilities will mature just like all his or her other abilities.
Interested in finding out how to get all these benefits? Click here!
...
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