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We are a not-for-profit association serving families who are using American Sign Language with their young children as well as folks who just have fun with American Sign Language in Prince William County.
We help each other overcome the challenges of learning and practicing ASL, provide mentoring for families, and sponsor events for hearing impaired children.
I am the mother of two children, a four year old hearing girl and a twenty month old hard of hearing girl. Our family seriously started learning signs when we discovered our youngest was born with a sensorineural hearing loss. We had used a handful of ASL (American Sign Language) signs with our older daughter when she was a baby, but did not go any further with her at the time.
Having two young children at home makes it difficult to schedule a college class in ASL and we found no resources through early intervention to help us with ASL, so we bought all the Signing Time! videos, watched several other videos, and I took two signing classes for babies and toddlers at the Northern Virginia Resource Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. I have started an online ASL class for myself, but am guilty of not keeping up with it as I should.
My hope is that organizing and planning this playgroup will encourage our family to keep signing even as our youngest is learning lots of spoken language as well. I also hope to be a resource for the next parents who find themselves in the whirlwind of discovering their child has a hearing loss. In addition, it lets me use my group teaching skills that have been dormant for the last five years since I semi-retired from teaching to have children. (I was a teacher of upper elementary and middle school aged children in English, History, and Math.) Lastly, I hope to be a helpful resource in the community for any and all who are interested in learning to talk with their hands.
I hope we can all learn together.