Hi there, and welcome to TinyTalk Walthamstow! I'm Jess, mother to Jacob & Isabel, and your local teacher.

Signing has always been an important part of my life – I’m an original ‘baby-signer’ myself, taught BSL to communicate with my deaf grandparents from a very young age. When my grandmother lost her sight, I learned the deaf-blind manual alphabet, which I still use to communicate with her today.

I started to sign with Jake at 5 months old, at our local TinyTalk group, and 6 weeks later he signed his first meaningful sign – ‘milk’. Jacob had a signing vocabulary of around 30-40 signs by the time he started talking at 16 months, some of his favourites being milk, more, eat, drink, duck, cat and biscuit. Even now he’s vocal and many of his signs have naturally fallen away, he still uses them from time to time to make himself understood, and is very enthusiastic about teaching his baby sister!

I wanted to share the joys of baby signing with other parents and now run two weekly classes in the Walthamstow area.

TinyTalk classes are suitable for newborns to age two, and are 1 hour long. The first half of the class is dedicated to singing and signing along to well-known nursery rhymes and action-based songs, allowing parents to learn all the signs and babies to have a great time enjoying the singing and interaction. The second half is for social time - babies get to have some playtime and socialise, and you get a hot drink made for you while you have a chat with the other parents. It's also a great time to see me about any signs or ask and questions you may have.

Contact me if you'd like to join us.. I do hope to see you at one of my classes soon!