Week 2.1 Sign Language

   I made it to week two of genius hour! For this week Brooke and I focused on learning the alphabet and numbers 1-30 in sign language. I already knew the alphabet so this part was easy for me. I learned the alphabet in the fifth grade when Mrs. Gruba taught it to us. I do not really know how I retained that information over all these years but it has come in handy now. For the first thirty numbers Brooke and I watched Youtube videos. It is handy doing this project with somebody else because you can mirror the other's actions and learn more efficiently that way. I did not anticipate how tired my hand would get after just an hour of practice. There are a lot of small, significant movements when it came just to the numbers and my hand was getting tired by the end of it. I also realized how utterly useless my left hand is. Despite these setbacks, I was able to learn the alphabet and numbers in sign language so it was all worth it. Once I get a little more proficient in the language I think I will really start to enjoy the learning process. If you guys want to learn the sign language numbers, I will include the link for the video that I used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFCXyB6q2nU

Week 2.0 Sign Language

   Well, we are halfway through the year and that means it is time for another genius hour. Brooke and I have decided to work together to learn sign language. Once again we started out with our shark tank pitch. For this pitch we talked about our plan and our hopes for this project. Like we stated in our pitch, we want to start simple. We are going to learn the alphabet, simple words and phrases, and work up to constructing basic sentences. We are going to use many resources to help us along, like books and websites. April McAuliffe is also going to be helping us. By the end of our project we want to be able to construct simple sentences and have a basic understanding of the language. It will be interesting to see how this project progresses since it is very different from cooking!

http://www.signlanguage101.com/ This link can help with learning basic sign language if anybody is interested.