NEW YORK, NY, USA, June 25: This summer, the Scholastic Storybook Treasures DVD series, which has won more awards than any other contemporary children´s video brand, will launch a new line of DVDs designed to teach early sign language skills to preschool children.

The first two releases are "Goodnight Moon . . . and more great bedtime stories" ($12.95 SRP)--lovingly adapted from the 1947 storybook by Margaret Wise Brown, which has sold tens of millions of units worldwide--and the loveable tale "A Pocket for Corduroy . . . and more stories about friendship," with "Five Little Monkeys" to follow this fall. The inaugural releases will both be available on July 27 at retail stores nationwide.

Building on the enormously popular trend of babies learning to communicate by sign language, this new ASL series helps build brain power and literacy skills in children ages 3 to 6. Studies point to increased language acquisition capability when children learn sign language at an early age, and educators recommend sign language to help any child build fine motor skills. And to assist with these skills, each of these new DVDs has been created to enhance sign language learning, with vocabulary sections and an interactive quiz on each story to build comprehension skills. Each DVDs also feature ASL fingerspelling.

This new ASL DVD series, from one of the most trusted brands in entertainment/ education, and developed by parents who are also ASL experts, will help to bring sign language and its benefits into homes everywhere – for both the hearing and hearing impaired. Each DVD features three best-selling stories enhanced by both vocal and ASL sign language narration, sign language vocabulary lessons and reading comprehension questions to support earlyliteracy skills, all developed by educational experts from Signs for Intelligence, a company founded by Missy Keast and her husband/partner Dave Victorson. Keast was born deaf and is known as the "Shakespeare of Sign Language" because of her eloquent storytelling and communications skills.

Keast and Victorson and, who are raising two young children with normal hearing abilities, note that the new Scholastic Storybook Treasures ASL DVD series is ideal for families with varying hearing abilities. "Most hearing impaired children are born to hearing parents who are not able to expose the kids to books early in life because they do not know how. This creates an enormous gap in early literacy exposure for hearing impaired kids. This new DVD series can help families fill that void," says Victorson. The productions have been tested with hundreds of children in elementary schools. "We want to inspire young families to continue signing beyond the baby/toddler years," Keast says.

The Scholastic Storybook Treasures series hails from the vaults of Weston Woods Studios, world-renowned for their careful film and video adaptations of best-selling children´s storybooks. Librarians and teachers around the country have long been using these very same productions, created by Weston Woods Studios with authors and illustrators, to enhance their students´ pre-reading experiences. Founded more than 50 years ago, and now a division of Scholastic, Weston Woods continues to produce top-notch video storytelling. Scholastic Storybook Treasures collects and presents these productions for the home marketplace and has, since its launch in 2003, become a top award-winning home video franchise for children.

Source: http://www.dvdtown.com