I am so honored to have such a well respected company and to have such amazing people represent my vision of My Smart Hands!  Now I can share it with you!  I’m one of the newest PTPA Blogaholics and I’m thrilled to not only be able to teach you the benefits of signing with your baby, show you my YouTube videos and share my Signs of the Week….now My Smart Hands is also a PTPA Winner!

My story starts when I was pregnant with my first child I wanted to find a way to stay at home with her but still have an income. Necessity being the mother of invention, I used the skills I had as a teacher and my knowledge of ASL and began teaching sign language to parents of hearing babies.  My classes became so successful that I founded My Smart Hands, which has now grown into an international company  

It started when I was working as an eighth grade teacher, running the literacy program at my school. The old program we were using wasn’t working so my principal asked me to try to find different ways to help our students improve their literacy skills. While doing research I came across a study that used the American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet to help students develop their spelling skills. I was fascinated with this concept, it made complete sense. ASL encompasses a number of learning styles but specifically kinesthetic and visual. I took this theory to my school, designed a great curriculum and began to have success with it. This led to me lecturing for teacher education programs at universities on the concept of using sign language to help promote literacy in our schools. These lectures,  I’m please to say, were very well received.   

Further into my research I came across several articles and research studies on using sign language with babies.  This concept fascinated me and it made me want to sign with my baby when I had one.  The benefits of signing with children are far greater than simple communication (read more about this in our FAQ page).   

This all lead me to the creation of My Smart Hands. With my background, teaching baby signing classes seemed to be the perfect fit! In 2005, while pregnant with my daughter, I began designing the My Smart Hands curriculum .  After signing with my new daughter and seeing her learn ASL, I was even more confident that this was the right career path for me. I fine tuned my program, designed a manual with a CD to accompany it and opened up my company to other instructors.  I wanted to give as many families as possible the opportunity to sign with their babies with help from a qualified My Smart Hands presenter. 

Here we are now, several years later and My Smart Hands is an international company with nearly 100 instructors and growing every day!  All of my instructors have unique backgrounds but we all have one thing in common, a love for signing!  All of My Smart Hands instructors are required to have formal ASL training. We pride ourselves in being an educationally based company that will deliver fulfilling and exciting classes to the parents that take them! 

Please check back each week to see my new posts on PTPA about signing with your baby!  I’ll include Signs of the Week as well as some great songs!  I’d love to answer your questions or see your comments!