Deaf awareness videos for early years children
To help children in the early years understand how to support their deaf peers, we've launched a free series of five videos on our YouTube channel.
These short, fun, and colourful animated videos feature a diverse range of animal characters from our children’s book, Elephant and the Lost Blanket.
Complete with subtitles and a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter, each video covers a different theme on how children can communicate, support and include their deaf peers.
Watch the videos below!
Tiger and Elephant's special ears
Lion wants to touch the shiny things on Tiger and Elephant's ears, but they're not toys! Elephant's hearing aids and Tiger's cochlear implants help them access sound.
Don't talk with your mouth full!
Elephant can't tell what Tiger is trying to say, because she's talking with her mouth full.
Getting Elephant's attention
Why is Elephant ignoring Giraffe? Tiger helps Giraffe understand he needs to get Elephant's attention another way.
Shhh – it's storytime!
Tiger can't hear Mrs Bear's story because there are too many other noises! Her friends help come up with ideas of how they can make the room quieter.
Elephant needs the quiet corner
Elephant's friend Giraffe comes to the rescue when she's feeling overwhelmed and tired from listening all day.
How to use the videos
The videos are freely available for anyone to watch on our YouTube channel. However, they will be most effective when used by early years practitioners in childcare settings.
Are you an early years practitioner or teacher?
Any nursery, childcare or reception setting can use the videos to give deaf awareness tips to hearing children. They may be useful if your setting has a mixture of deaf and hearing children. However, all children will benefit from learning about deaf awareness, whether or not there are deaf children also in your setting.
You can help by giving additional context to each video. For example, you can pause the videos and ask questions to check understanding. Or you can explain some of the concepts in more detail, like what sign language is.
These videos are great to use at any time, and we hope you will use them multiple times to reinforce learning. It may be especially useful to show the videos during important events like Deaf Awareness Week.
What do you think of the videos?
We’d love to know what you think! Watch the videos and give your feedback by clicking the button below (or going to our online form).