It's About Games

Kids love games, so learning sign via games seems to work the best for our class. Half the time the kids don't realize they're learning signs as they play. We have to be careful, however, to make sure everyone can participate in the games including those who haven't picked up a lot of signing and those that don't want to be put on the spot. "Games that have the 'it' person being voluntary and where the kids can use either a single sign or a whole sentence work best.

Simon Says" is a great one to start with. Words like "dance, play, walk, run, sing, fall down (carefully), sit down, and fly" work great. Later on you can even add emotions like "be angry, happy, sad..." etc. Or "walk sad, run happy" etc. We got creative after a while (once we'd learned animals) and did things like "Be an angry rabbit, "a sad crocodile", and so forth.

Although some of the kids were against it, we also tried some songs with sign. "Old Macdonald" and "If Your Happy and You Know It" worked pretty good.