Signing Savvy, Your Sign Language Resource

You may have noticed a theme across the signs of the day in the last week. We asked our Twitter followers for suggestions for the sign of the day and someone suggested we try week-long themes. Although we will not be using a theme every week for the sign of the day, we thought it was a great idea to start incorporating a theme occasionally.

We choose family members for our first sign of the day theme, from Wednesday, September 14 to Wednesday, September 21. Signing Savvy Member Tip: To see past sign of the days, view the sign of the day wordlist.

If you follow the sign of the day, we thought it would be a great learning opportunity to point out a few takeaways about the signs from the last week.

Sunday's sign of the day was MOM. For this sign, the thumb of the 5-hand taps the chin. Signing Savvy Member Tip: Take a look at the memory aid for signs to have a better understanding of the origin of signs and a way to remember them. Our memory aid for MOM explains that the lower portion of the face refers to the female gender and that's one way you can remember the sign for MOM is signed on/near your chin. If you look at the sign for FEMALE, you will see you stroke the side of your chin with the thumb of the A-hand.

DAD, which was the sign of the day on Monday, has some similar signing patterns as MOM. DAD is signed on/near the forehead and male signs are typically made on the forehead. See the sign for MALE and DAD.

GRANDMA (the first Wednesday's sign of the day) and GRANDPA are signed similarly to MOM and DAD, but with an additional movement out suggesting a generation out.

The signs for UNCLE (Thursday's sign of the day) and AUNT also follow these same gender patterns with UNCLE signed with the U-hand in a circular motion near the forehead and AUNT signed with the A-hand in a circular motion near the chin. You can easily remember the hand shape that each of these signs use because UNCLE starts with the letter "U" and uses the U-hand and AUNT starts with the letter "A" and uses the A-hand.

Now that you are starting to notice the patterns of signs, you should be able to guess the sign for NIECE (the second Wednesday's sign of the day) and NEPHEW. Both start with the letter "N" and use the N-hand in a circular motion. NIECE is signed near the chin, while NEPHEW is signed near the forehead.

COUSIN (Saturday's sign of the day) is signed using the C-hand in a circular motion close to the head -- that sign could be used for a female or a male cousin. There is also a second way to sign COUSIN where you shake your C-hand by the head instead of using a circular motion. If you wanted to specifically sign FEMALE COUSIN, do the sign by your chin, and if you want to sign MALE COUSIN, do the sign by your forehead.

The signs for SON (Tuesday's sign of the day) and DAUGHTER (Friday's sign of the day) do not follow the exact same sign pattern as the last few signs discussed. SON and DAUGHTER start like the signs for MALE and FEMALE and then transition into the sign for BABY. You can remember these signs because (regardless of age) a SON is one's MALE BABY and a DAUGHTER is someone's FEMALE BABY.

Our featured sign of the day theme of family members did not include any signs for in-laws, but there is also a pattern to be found when signing in-laws. Often it is the sign of the family member, plus the sign for LAW. See MOTHER-IN-LAW as an example.

We hope you enjoyed our first week of using a theme for the sign of the day! We will also be using a theme for the next week. We had a Twitter follower suggest the theme of emotions. Thursday, September 22 - Thursday, September 29 will be emotions - we hope that makes you "happy"!!