ASL - Finger Spelling Our Names

We have one classroom in our program that accommodates the deaf students who attend. One of my good friends is the teacher in that class so we get the kids together often for fun activities.

I think it's important to try to teach my kids some sign language so they can try to communicate with the others kids when they are together. My friend does "Sign Time" with a few of the classes during the year and last year it was even an elective the kids could sign up for. Today we learned how to finger spell our names doing this fun activity. 

My friend turned me on to the Enchanted Learning website where I was able to find the fingered letters. I saved each one to my computer and pasted four to a page so I would have the whole alphabet for later uses. After counting how many I would need of each, we made copies and cut them apart. I laid the letters out on the table and had the kids walk around finding each letter in their name. They colored and cut them out, then pasted them onto a piece of large white paper. My friend had a sheet of the regular alphabet available for them to color their letters and they cut those out and pasted them below their finger letters. 

Everyone had to go up to the front of the room and practice signing their names before we hung them up for all to see. This was actually a pretty long activity. From start to finish it took them about and hour and a little longer for a few of them. All in all, a great time was had by all!