Bill Nye and Signing Time

Remember this guy?! 

I noticed one day in our library that they had about a dozen Bill Nye the Science Guy movies on DVD. On a whim, and because the topic corresponded with our preschool theme that week, I checked one out and brought it home for Arthur. He loved it! He is totally hooked on Bill Nye now and asks for a new one each week. I don't know what I'll do when we go through all of the episodes at the library. One of my favorite things that have come from this new love is to hear Arthur randomly shout "SCIIIIIENCCCEEE!!"  just like Bill Nye. He also loves to make up his own science experiments now and I often overhear him 'narrating' an experiment as he works at it. A few weeks ago he was in the thick of one of these experiments while he was in the bath and the bath cup that he had filled with water tipped over and poured everywhere. Arthur looked down at the puddle and said as if to himself, "Whoa! That's a lot of science!" 

P.S. Arthur is dead set on dressing up as Bill Nye the Science Guy for Halloween, and I think if he actually does I will have to send a picture of it to Bill Nye!

While Arthur has been living and breathing science, Stella has become infatuated with Baby Signing Time. I started noticing how Stella was making her own signs and gestures for a lot words a couple of months ago and thought I might try teaching her a few real ASL signs. She took to it really well and so we have been working on it more and more. I studied ASL in college and loved it, but after Arthur was born I just didn't feel right about signing with him. For some reason Stella has picked it up pretty quickly and now I have added signing time to our preschool curriculum. Arthur loves learning the signs with Stella, practicing them, and is always asking me what the sign is for anything he can think of. I feel excited when I remember a sign that he asks for, but I know that I have forgotten a lot so I am putting myself though a crash course to remind me and brush up on signing skills. 

It is such a beautiful and expressive language and I am so excited that it has become a part of our days now!

Stella tries to copy most of the signs we make, but so far the words that Stella loves to sign on her own are:

Dad, Mom, eat, drink, milk, more, please, blanket, banana, cracker, book, fish, again, thank you and water...

there may be others, but those are the ones that readily come to mind!