My Signing Time

I finished my first series of ASL classes; in fact, because I knew so many words already, we finished the whole book, Learning American Sign Language.   I'm taking a second series, this time using the phrase book, American Sign Language Phrase Book.  I love it!  And I'm getting much better.  The kids are picking up a few things; Mama knows a few more.  It comes in handy in public or across rooms or, as we've found, at the ice skating rink where the kids can't hear us through the plexiglass.

When they were little, we used "eat" and "more" and the kids knew all the animals and colors.  Now, we tend to use more (grown up) words, so these the ones I'm working on with the kids (you can look up a lot of these at ASLU, which my teacher recommended):

• hungry, eat, dinner, breakfast, lunch
• restroom
• yes, no, maybe
• help
• later, now
• change
• take, give
• ready
• hurry
• keep
• careful
• stupid
• weird
• funny, fun
• easy
• want
• need, should
• again
• like, don't like
• forget, remember
• more
• make
• fine
• finished
• stop
• always, never
• same, too, different
• understand
• think, know
• talk, say
• happy, sad, mad/grumpy
• hot, cold
• tired
• please
• sorry
• go, come
• start, begin
• cancel
• interested
• who, what, when, where, why, how, how much
• what happened?
• sick, pain
• better
• good, bad
• wrong
• love
• impossible
• bring
• watch, look, see
• worry
• embarrass
• wonderful
• sure, real
• miss
• all, nothing
• here

I'm better at signing than at understanding signs, so my teacher recommended that I watch "Switched at Birth," the ABC family show about a two teenage girls, one who is deaf, who discover they were, you guessed it, switched.  It's actually pretty good--and I love that Marlee Matlin is in it, too.  

So, while the kids are at camp this week, I'm cramming.  And binging on the show.