Jess and Sandra 

That's me--  

Indigenous Signs for Cities

Neat, Just what the title says. cities from many countries.

ASL University

Can't leave this site out. There is a lot to learn here. Both wonderful and free. Includes step by step lessons to learn ASL. I like the testing pages and with a little adaptation you could print them and use them. I also enjoyed the fingerspelling practice pages (50 pages!!)

ASL to English

I found this site enlightening. What would it be like to teach a deaf child to read and write? Certainly most deaf are very capable of learning to read and write in English just as most of the hearing are.
As we are learning ASL so many issues have come to light for me. What concepts are more difficult to learn if you can't hear? What issues effect the deaf that are not a big deal for those of us who can hear? How do the deaf feel about trying to communicate with hearing people who often don't even try to understand? It is so important that we try to understand deaf culture as well as the language.

Cool School

Cool School is Cyber Oregon Online. They offer high school credit for their online ASL courses (4 semesters offered total.)
$345 for one semester for non Oregon resident, $295 for Oregon resident. I can't recommend them, because I haven't tried it. I'm glad to see it offered though. They state that your current high school district maybe willing to pay them, and thats true if they don't offer the course themselves. To get to the ASL class click "courses" then "World Languages" then scroll to ASL.

Hey, Anthony Sign something! 

ASL at Redbud Library 

Here are a few of our friends from our ASL class at Redbud Library. 

About Signing Numbers

Here are some helpful rules for signing numbers.

PBSkids Arthur's Sign Design

Here's one for the kids. There is a fingerspelling and numbers printable. A page that lets you formulate a question and then shows you how to sign it, and a page which shows how to fingerspell your name.

Fingerspelling!

Thank you Johanna, Don't know how I missed this one. It is a good one and the images are very clear . I need all the help with fingerspelling I can get. ( It helps if you can spell!)

Linton Free printables

Wow! Found some really nice pages to print today. This one is especially good. Thanks to Teresa Linton who offers these free for educational purposes. Some pages contain signs for holidays that I do not celebrate, however I see nothing wrong with learning how to sign the words any more than, learning how to spell them!

Speech fun site

This page has a long list of printable files. They are quality pdf's which should print very clearly but are slow without a high speed connection.

K8AIT

This site has signs for many aviation and scientific words such as hypothesis!

Classifiers in American Sign Language

Most of the texts we have don't explain classifiers separately
or in groups of handshapes. When you click on this link you'll see the classifiers grouped in handshapes, you then click the shapes to get a short description of some of the uses along with a floating hand to show you the shape. I found this to be helpful. If you have a high speed connection you can then watch a flash movie with a person showing a lot of signs as examples. However there is no interpretation so you may not know what you are seeing signed.

ASL literature

I was thrilled to find this site today! They show short movies of ASL poetry, stories and more. With my slow connection I only watched a few. I'll be back though. Memorizing a short story or poem is a great way to add to your vocabulary and gain some speed if you're new to signing.

Growing up without hearing.

These are stories presented by Gallaudet University. They are designed to introduce you (and your children) to what it's like to be deaf. You'll find them easy to read and comprehend and a nice lesson in deaf culture.

Question: How long does it take to learn Sign Language?

Click here to see!

Julia and Diane 

Someone else's blog.

This is a nice short story about the joy of communication.

Seasigns, Nope not seesign......

Did you know scuba divers use sign language? Makes sense.

Scroll

The page is getting long! To see previous posts scroll down to the bottom and click on October.

Jessica, Orville, Tom 

Me, Nina, Julia 

Devon, Vicky, Julia, Helen 

Friday

Several members of our class got to attend the Deaf (+friends) social last night. I was too beat to go but the kids had a great time. Julia came running in to tell me that 5 of her new deaf friends had gotten together to give her and Paul their name signs. Hers is the sign for "J" but with both hands, which is very cute because she is left handed and has had a hard time not signing "J" backwards. It's very fitting. Paul's is the sign for "Play" also very fitting and he is also very happy with his name sign.
We all learn so much more when we have a chance to communicate with our deaf friends. It is frustrating at times but there is no better way to cement those signs in your head than to use them when you NEED them! Learning ASL is becoming such a joy to us! At first it seemed like taking on a lot, when with four kids, I'm already rather maxed out, but it has been wonderful and a benefit to us in many ways.

Sign Writing

Sign writing is like it sounds, the written form of sign language. This is an extensive site and deserves a good look. It includes children’s literature, King James Bible Passages, Dictionaries, Newsletters, Lessons, and several downloads. Don't give up if it looks confusing at first just find the lessons page and spend a few minutes there. It will start to make sense. I find the site a little difficult to navigate though, so if you can't find what you're looking for email me and I'll try to help.

Sign Writing email

Very cool. From the Sign Writing site, Lets you send an email using sign writing. Send a few to us. @ mybraincells@yahoo.com

ASL dictionary

This is another web browser. A little slow to download with my connection but it has a lot of signs.

Fingerspelling fonts to download

ASL software at Amazon.com

Medical ASL phrasebook

A very useful site not only for medical signs but for everyone. It's an interesting read for the beginner.

Koko

On the subject of ASL Koko the gorilla comes to mind almost as often as Helen Keller. The kids may not have heard of Koko though so call them over and share this link with them, they'll love it!

ASL in elementary school

This is an adorable site with a class learning to sign.

Teaching your baby to sign

Here is some interesting information about teaching your baby/ toddler to sign. I think it's a great idea. It is much easier than you might think. Many of the signs that you would want to teach a preverbal child are very natural. For example the ASL sign for "you" is to simply point at the person you are talking about. To say "I" or "ME" you point at yourself. You just have to be faithful about useing the sign everytime you use the word. You do not need to spend any money on books or videos. A vocabulary of 25 or so signs is enough to avoid a lot of frustration when your child does not have the verbal skills to communicate. Communicating with your child this way (signing and speaking) often results in the baby begining to sign at 6 to 8 months. Sign language uses both the right and left sides of the brain so while some people are naturally stronger on left brain subjects and some the right. Sign language seems to be easier for either. You can make a list of signs that would seem helpful and find them online. I will hopefully soon post many here. Some suggestions would be:

{I, Me} Blanket,
You, Bed,
Mine, Get,
Yours, Come,
Want, Go,
Need, Please,
Eat, Mommy,
Drink, Daddy,
Sleep, Happy,
Toy, Sad,
More, Mad
Hurt,
Yes, No, You get the Idea.

Mt. Konocti