Sign Language and Reading

Claire's teacher was a deaf education major at A&M, and she said in the beginning of the year that she would be teaching the kids sign language. At the time, I thought to myself, "Sure, good luck with that," and never heard (or saw) another peep about it. Then last week on the way home, Claire asked me what a D (the letter of the week) looked like. I thought she was talking about writing it, so I told her there was a stick and a hump. She adamantly told me "No! It looks like this." and did the sign for D. Then she proceeded to show me what A,B, and C look like, too. We spent the rest of the drive home talking about sign language, with her asking me what all the other letters looked like, too. I could only remember a few, but I luckily still have one of my special ed books from college that has a chapter on sign language. We pulled it out as soon as we got home, and she's been pouring over it ever since. She's taught herself G,H,L,M,U,V,W, and Y, and she recognizes a lot of the other ones that are too hard for her to make. I've never seen her so intent on learning and mastering a skill before.

And in related news, we think C's just about to start reading. She's known her letters and their sounds for over a year now, but she's just now really starting to figure out that you can put letters together to make words. She can sound out -at words and loves to read The Cat in the Hat with anyone who's willing. She also has a few sight words under her belt. Yay Claire!