Colleen Brunetti, M.Ed., revised by Rose Turnbow
Teachers in a classroom setting and families who homeschool their children have a wonderful opportunity to choose curriculum and activities tailored exactly to children’s needs and interests. Let’s look at some of the ways that signing with your child or class can be integrated into your day.
Capitalize on learning strengths
- Children learn in different ways and through a variety of strengths.
- Sign language taps into tactile (touch), auditory, visual, and kinesthetic (movement) ways of communicating.
- Signing appeals to many ages, making it ideal to use when you are working with more than one child.
Enhance learning across subject areas
- Sign language can be used naturally throughout all the curriculum you use.
- Sign the words you know as you read a book or practice poetry.
- Number signs will support learning to count, addition, and subtraction concepts.
- Social studies alive along with your lessons when you sign. SignIt ASL Unit 3 covers lessons on the United States, countries, and government.
- Sing! All Signing Time materials are set to music that children love.
- Science is a memorable experience when you use TreeSchoolers Science. Did you know – Rachel went to NASA to work with them when creating Our Solar System?
Introduce a second language
Learning to sign is a great way to introduce a second language to your children. Many colleges and universities recognize ASL and Deaf education as a foreign language which fulfills this requirement for college entrance.
Enhance this learning with some cultural experiences by contacting a local Deaf organization in your area to see how you might be able to meet some people from the community to practice signs.
Educator Resources
- You can access our entire Signing Time digital library, getting access to over 1000 signs, and includes Rachel & the TreeSchoolers Science for only $9.99 per month. Try it out free for 14-days.
- If you want to take it even further, a full curriculum with lesson plans, printable pages, and interactive activities are available at MySigningTime.com in the Signing Time K-3 Curriculum and Signing Time Preschool Curriculum.
- To further your education be sure to check out our online course, SignIt ASL, created for 12 to adult. Laugh and learn ASL along with Keith Wann, Peter Cook, and Rachel and Leah Coleman.