Getting Started and Continuing Teaching ASL to Kids

A great series of articles about teaching ASL to groups of children, whether in the classroom or daycare or even at home. Lots of game and activity ideas for strengthening vocabulary and conversation skills.

Starting Out Teaching Sign Language To Groups of Children
Vocabulary Building Games for Teaching Sign Language to Children
Teaching Phrases and Conversation Skills in Sign Language

On Their Own Time

At the local teacher's store I purchased a 'flip book' of beginner signs. It's a self checking type of flipbook with the answers on the opposite side to the illustration. I've put it out for the kids to look at. i've also issued the challenge:

Each child can learn one new sign a day, teach it to another child, and then both of them report back to me. Then they can enter their name in a draw for friday for a nice treat.

So far VERY positive. Teaching other children is exciting for them, and it reinforces their new signs.

Roll of the Dice

Just bought an alphabet die! Very excited! We're going to take turns rolling it and then have to come up with a sign that starts with that letter. We're also going to try thinking up as many signs starting with that letter as we can in one minute. The kids enjoy games with a bit of competition, however I feel sorry for the child who rolls Z.

Mortimer

So all of the classes have been asked to do a 'skit/music/performance' for the opening of some brand new rooms for our program. Of course I want to incorporate some ASL in it as well. I think we're going to do "Mortimer" by Robert Munsch. Everyone can sign most of the words already, and they will have fun acting out the parts! As well, we can have some kids doing 'sound effects' with the sticks we practice rhythms with. Such as the 'thump thump thump' when people walk up and down the stairs. And playing along to his 'bang bang rattle cling clang' song. I'm very excited about this, and hope the kids are too!

Overacting

In order to learn emotion signs better, as well as practice other signs, we came up with an activity we called "Over acting".

Decide on a sentance to sign. (eg. I ate an apple for breakfast)
Have one person stand to sign the sentance.
Pick another child from the audience to sign an emotion that they have to use while signing the sentance. (eg. happy, excited, surprised, sad, angry, sick)

This activity ends up with lots of laughing and dramatic acting!

It's about Family

We took a little long, I think, in our class to learn family signs. I wish now that we'd introduced them earlier. Ce'la vie.

Once we learned family signs we started activities such as sitting in a circle and going around describing a family member.

eg. My brother has brown hair
My mother has glasses
etc.

There's lots of games and activities that family signs can be introduced into, be creative!

What's Wrong?

This activity requires a bit of ASL vocab, but it's extremely flexible as to what that vocab is. For our class we used it to learn the words "wrong, need, lost, and help".

Sit in a circle and pick someone for the middle. That person goes up to someone in the circle and signs, "Can you help me?"
The second person signs, "What's wrong?"

This can be followed by numerous small sentances such as the examples below:

My foot hurts
I'm sick
My elephant is sick
I need a banana
I need a toilet

Or conversations such as:

My shoe is lost
Your shoe?
My shoe!
What color is your shoe?
Blue.
How big is your shoe?
Big!
I'll help you!
Thank you!

The important thing is to remember that no answer is wrong as long as the kids are signing!