In Part 1 of this article, I reviewed three websites that include some American Sign Language games that your students (or children) can play. This article contains two others.
www.kiddiessigns.com
Once at this website, click on the sign language games link. There are a total of 6 games to play (so is the most extensive of the sites I’ve recommended so far –see Educational Sign Language Games to Play on the Web - Part 1 to see the others). You can play for free, or for a nominal fee you can add a picture of your child or student, so that they will see themselves pop up in different places while playing the game(s). Children can learn the manual alphabet (and is shown an object that begins with that letter - which is a plus), and how to count in American Sign Language up to the number 20. What is nice about these two games is that when the game finishes showing the first letter or number, it goes right on to the next one without the student/child having to click. So children can just watch and sign along.
The other 4 games are great practice activities, they are called “What is this letter?”, “What is this # sign?”, “What is this color sign?” and “What is this shape sign?.” In each game they will either show you the sign and you have to select the right letter, number, color or shape, or they will show you the letter, number, color or shape, and you have to select the right sign from three choices. It is great fun and excellent practice. My only wish for this site is that there currently isn’t a game for colors or shapes where they actually teach you the signs, like they already have for the alphabet and numbers. So if you don’t already know your color and shape signs, you have to try to figure them out as you go along. An added bonus to the site is that for $3 (as of 7/21/08) you can download another game for one week called Signing in the Park. By perusing the demos, this is very cute and you can learn a lot of other great signs. They are American Sign Language signs, but not correct ASL grammar. Although the testimonials state otherwise, the demo shows them sign “where, baby” instead of “baby, where”. Overall, an excellent site that you could actually spend some time at with great practice activities!
www.signingtimekids.org
There are three games to play at this site. Leah’s Letter Challenge is a memory game where you need to match the English letter with the manual alphabet letter. Great practice game for those children learning the manual alphabet. What is nice about this game is that an actual photograph of the hand is shown, instead of a drawing, so the handshape is clear and concise. In the Concentration game, there are ASL letters and numbers mixed in with animated drawings of things seen in the Signing Time videos (like Hopkins the frog doing different things or the Signing Time logo, etc.). So you may get some review of numbers and manual alphabet letters while playing this game. Those children familiar with the PBS show or the videos will probably enjoy seeing some of their favorite characters. The third game, Hopkins Hop, is just a fun game to play with a character out of Signing Time videos, but requires no knowledge of ASL.
As you can see there are positives and negatives to every website that includes American Sign Language games as we discussed here. Which one you will choose to have your child/student spend time on will be dependent upon your goals and objectives for them and the level at which they are signing already.