Kindy Uplift Program and Children’s key word signing (KWS)

Key Word Sign (KWS) is a communication approach that uses manual signs, facial expressions and natural gestures alongside spoken words to support communication. It is commonly used with children who are pre-verbal, have communication difficulties or benefit from additional visual communication support.

In Australia, Key Word Sign was historically known as Makaton Australia, and many people still search for terms such as Makaton, Makaton signing or Makaton signs for children. Today, Key Word Sign in Australia uses signs from Auslan (Australian Sign Language). Key Word Sign is not Auslan: Auslan is a complete language with its own grammar and linguistic structure, whereas KWS is used alongside spoken language, with only the key words in a sentence typically signed.

Children’s Key Word Sign applies this approach specifically to children and the people who support them. Our training, resources and services are designed for early childhood educators, schools, allied health professionals, families and other organisations working with children.

While Key Word Sign was traditionally used primarily with people with communication difficulties and their communication partners, our approach is broader. We believe signs and gestures can benefit all children, providing another way to understand, express themselves, participate and communicate while spoken language develops.

This makes Children’s Key Word Sign an excellent fit for early childhood education and a valuable way to use your Kindy Uplift funding to support communication, inclusion and learning across your service.

For more information about Key Word Sign, Makaton and how Key Word Sign works in Australia, click here.

The Kindy Uplift program provides funding to eligible Queensland kindergarten services to strengthen children’s access to and meaningful participation in kindergarten experiences and improve learning and development outcomes.

Kindy Uplift funding can be used for professional development, programs, resources and supports that build teacher and educator capability and support inclusion within approved kindergarten programs.

The program focuses on six priority areas aligned with the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) V2.0:

1. Culturally safe, inclusive and responsive kindergarten programs
   • Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives
   • Equity and access for all
2. Social and emotional learning
3. Physicality
4. Executive function
5. Language and literacy
6. Mathematics and numeracy

Children’s Key Word Sign can support outcomes across five of the six Kindy Uplift priority areas, with particularly strong links to equity and access, social and emotional learning, executive function, language and literacy, and mathematics and numeracy.

Below, we explore the research and evidence behind Children’s Key Word Sign and signs and gestures more broadly, and how these benefits align with the Kindy Uplift priority areas.

Equity and access for all

Every child deserves a way to understand, communicate and participate. By using Key Word Sign throughout everyday routines, play and learning, educators provide children with another way to understand what is happening, express their needs and ideas, and connect with the people around them.

Research in Australian early childhood education highlights KWS as a valuable inclusive practice, with the potential to reduce barriers to participation, support belonging and value diverse ways of communicating (Cologon & Mevawalla, 2018). Rather than waiting until a child is identified as needing communication support, KWS can be embedded across the whole kindergarten making communication more accessible for everyone.

Being able to recognise, understand and communicate emotions is an important part of children’s social and emotional development. Key Word Sign gives children a visual and physical way to express how they are feeling, including when spoken words are difficult to access.

Research has shown that using signs alongside emotion words can support children’s emotional understanding, expression, wellbeing and regulation (Davidson & Randhawa, 2022). Our Children’s Key Word Sign Emotions Training builds on this evidence, giving educators practical signs and strategies to develop emotional literacy and support co-regulation and emotional regulation throughout the kindergarten day.

Children learn through movement, action and interaction with the world around them. Key Word Sign naturally brings purposeful hand and body movements into communication and learning, encouraging children to watch, imitate and actively participate rather than relying on spoken language alone.

Research shows that gesture and movement can support embodied learning, helping children connect physical actions with meaning and new concepts (Goldin-Meadow, 2014). By incorporating signs into songs, stories, routines and play, educators can create engaging opportunities for children to move, communicate and learn at the same time.

Communication and language are at the heart of almost everything that happens in a kindergarten day—from asking for help and joining in play to listening to a story, learning a new concept or telling a friend an idea. Key Word Sign adds another layer to spoken language, allowing children to see and physically experience the meaning of important words as they hear them.

For children who are still developing spoken language or who have communication difficulties, signs can provide an important additional way to understand others and express themselves. Importantly, using signs alongside speech does not prevent children from learning to talk. Research has found that sign-supported communication can support speech and language development in children with communication and developmental disabilities (Dunst, Meter & Hamby, 2011).

The benefits aren’t limited to children with identified communication needs. Research with hearing children has found benefits for vocabulary and early literacy development when signs are incorporated into learning (Daniels, 1994; 2004). Meaningful and iconic gestures can also help children learn and remember unfamiliar words, including vocabulary in another language (Bonvillian et al., 2020; de Wit et al., 2022).

Researchers have used the term “sign gain” to describe the additional information that signs can provide alongside spoken language (Hauser & Kartheiser, 2014). A sign can give a child another clue to a word’s meaning and another way to remember and retrieve it.

And KWS doesn’t need to become a separate activity in an already busy kindergarten day. Signs can be woven naturally into conversations, stories, songs, routines and play. By consistently speaking and signing key words, educators can create a rich, multimodal language environment that gives children more ways to understand, more ways to learn and more ways to communicate.

Young children develop mathematical understanding through language, movement, play and hands-on experiences. Signs and gestures can make mathematical ideas more visible, giving children another way to explore and communicate concepts such as position, space, size, quantity and relationships.

There is a strong body of research demonstrating the role of gesture in mathematical learning. Children can learn more when gesture is incorporated into maths instruction, with benefits for understanding, retention and transferring learning to new problems (Goldin-Meadow et al., 2009; Novack et al., 2014; Seccia & Goldin-Meadow, 2024). Research with signing children also demonstrates the important relationship between manual communication, language and mathematical thinking (Goldin-Meadow et al., 2012).

Our own research is now exploring this specifically in early childhood, investigating how Key Word Sign can be intentionally incorporated into early mathematics learning, particularly spatial thinking and concepts of position, direction and movement (Quane et al., 2026). Our Early Maths Training brings this research into practice, giving educators signs and practical strategies they can embed naturally into everyday play and mathematical learning.