Louise Sattler, a Nationally Certified School Psychologist and owner of Signing Families, will be performing a special story time in sign language at Barnes & Noble on Thursday, March 29. Sattler, who is fluent in American Sign Language, will read aloud and sign from the works of Eric Carle’s “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?”“I’m really excited about the trip to Grand Rapids,” said Sattler, who lives in the greater Washington-DC area. “While I’m in town I’ll be doing the story time at Barnes & Noble and I’ll be presenting two programs on sign language strategies at the 2012 Early Childhood Conference, hosted by the Michigan Association for the Education of Young Children (MiAEYC). Barnes & Noble and MiAEYC are wonderful organizations and I feel honored to be involved with them.”
The Barnes & Noble story time will begin at 7 p.m. in the Children’s section, which is on the second floor of the Barnes & Noble in the Woodland Mall. The store is located at 3195 28th St. SE Suite B116, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 49512. The story time is free and open to the public. Directly following story time, Barnes & Noble customers will have a chance to meet Sattler, who will be selling and autographing copies of her DVD “Baby, Toddler, and Preschool Sign Language” until 9 p.m.
“I developed ‘Baby, Toddler, and Preschool Sign Language’ to promote language in children. I’m particularly interested in helping augment language development in children who have atypical linguistic skills, such as in the case of autism. The DVD is based on language development principals with families, educators and caregivers in mind. It uses instructing language models and there is a lot humor in it. Humor can be such a great educational tool – it makes learning more fun, and if learning is more fun, it’s often easier,” said Sattler.
The DVD includes easy-to-follow instructions and demonstrations with more than 50 signs in English and Spanish, including everyday words such as bathroom, the ABCs, numbers 1-10 and more. For more information, visit www.signingfamilies.com.
Sattler has been assisting people with special needs for the past 20 years, and founded Signing Families in 2006 to teach sign language to all ages and levels of development. Sattler also is a contributing writer for Education.com, where she writes on special education and psychology topics, and she is a founding member of 411 Voices, which is an organization of women entrepreneurs who serve as expert speakers and sources for a variety of media outlets, businesses, nonprofit organizations, research groups and educational facilities.
For more information on the 2012 Early Childhood Conference or the Michigan Association for the Education of Young Children, visit www.miaeyc.org. For more information on Barnes & Noble or a complete listing of its upcoming author events, visit www.barnesandnoble.com.