Lesson #7

My motivation for learning this week hit a low as I have been busy with work and with finals approaching. I tried to do motivate myself tactically saying that I could reward myself by getting some ice cream at the end of the week but that only made me think of ice cream more and then I just had to go get some ice cream right then and there. Sigh. As such, I started my lesson learning how to Sign clothes and ended up skipping a few chapters in the book to learn how to Sign food related things...specifically ice cream

Jacket	Breakfast	Cheese
Hat	Lunch	Ice Cream
Gloves	Dinner	Bacon
Gown	Restaurant	Water
Pants	Milk	Cream
Coat	Meat	Fry

I'm sure you all want to know how to Sign for ice cream now. : ) It is pretty self explanatory. Here is a YouTube video of how to Sign the yummy dessert.

 Some topics of Signs are easier to learn than others. For example, last weeks Signs of emotions was pretty easy for me to catch on and some food (like Ice Cream) is self explanatory. Other Signs, such as pronouns and some verbs are more difficult to learn.

I find that I have a lot of "Ah-Ha!" moments while learning how to Sign. For example, the Sign for "bacon" is done by having your two fingers pressed together, your palms down, and then pulling your fingers apart in a "wiggly" line. Pretty easy right? Being able to see the wiggly line in the book reminded me of a piece of bacon (see image below), but if I had just seen someone Sign the word (without knowing what it was), I probably would have thought that it was a necktie or a ribbon.

With this weeks reading being about transferring knowledge, I immediately started to think of how I see an image in my mind of whatever I am Signing before I Sign. I mentioned before how Signs can correlate with each other to create one Sign (example: The Sign for "Cop" is made by Signing the letter "C" on your chest). I have previous knowledge in my mind of what a Cop is, what a Cop does and in particular, that a Cop wears a badge on his/her uniform. It helps me remember that the "C" Sign will need to go on my shoulder to complete the Sign for "Cop".