How did your families learn to sign?

Lysander

Lysander

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I have a friend whose daughter is hoh. She wants to give her access in any way she can so she's trying to teach her to sign. The problem is she has almost no resources. The local community college where I've taken 2 classes has announced they're not doing any more ASL classes. The one church in the area that had classes said they didn't have enough interest to bother this spring. The IU in our area says they won't intervene until she's of school age.

So how did your families learn? My friend literally has all the drive and desire in the world to learn and teach her daughter, but seriously has almost no resources. Is there something we're missing? How do people learn if there's no one to teach them?
 
Well I’ve never formally gone to school or anything to learn ASL, yet I’m pretty darn fluent from talking with other D/HOH since it’s the easiest way for me to communicate instead of pretending I hearhalf he conversation.

You can learn the alphabet on almost any app or websites for free. I also use a website and app called “signing savvy”. It’s $10 a month for premium service to be able to search any word you want whenever you want, and also put sentences together.

If she’d rather do it the free way, on YouTube is a man named “Bill Vicars”. As long as you know he alphabet you can easily keep up. His videos are amazing and teach not only vocabulary, but proper ASL sentence structure as well
 
If your friend's daughter is HoH there should be resources through the state to teach families. Depending on her age, I know in CO birth through age 3 are eligible for home intervention services through Child Find when they set up an ISFP. For older kids there's still services I would get in touch with your state school for the Deaf. Online stuff is fine... but if you want to be involved in the Deaf community there's no substitute for being active in person with other Deaf/HoH people.
 
Lysander said:
I have a friend whose daughter is hoh. She wants to give her access in any way she can so she's trying to teach her to sign. The problem is she has almost no resources. The local community college where I've taken 2 classes has announced they're not doing any more ASL classes. The one church in the area that had classes said they didn't have enough interest to bother this spring. The IU in our area says they won't intervene until she's of school age.

So how did your families learn? My friend literally has all the drive and desire in the world to learn and teach her daughter, but seriously has almost no resources. Is there something we're missing? How do people learn if there's no one to teach them?
Click to expand...
https://www.mydeafchild.org/apply

"Sign It" has free lessons for families of children under age 3.

http://signitasl.com/
 
Doesn't your friend have access to the internet? There are all kind of resources available if she wants to learn ASL. We learned using Bill Vicars Lifeprint website (Free). He also has lessons that can be installed on a cell phone. We also use Signing Savvy both on the computer and our cell phones. As mentioned above, there are lots of YouTube videos.

I bet there's somebody in her area that knows sign and would be willing to tutor the both of them. That might be a bit more difficult to find especially if she lacks internet access.
 
Yeah, but the problem is more so that she wants to learn with her daughter, son, and husband. And videos aren't really conducive for everyone sitting around watching them. And with Signing Savvy and Lifeprint, they're definitely more geared toward an adult learning. I don't think that a 4 year old would really be able to get anything from either of those. I suppose something like Signing Time would work for the daughter. But for an adult those videos get annoying and boring very quickly.
 
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