If I can be honest, I dreaded this whole learning project thing… now that I am deep into it, I am loving it!!

I was really worried about not finding forums, apps, and platforms to learn from because of the struggles I have had in the past trying to teach myself songs on guitar. But I feel like I have been having a lot of great success with this journey, and I am looking forward to what I can learn the next day!

Because I work at a daycare, I thought it would be fun to learn some of our circle time songs in ASL and I wasn’t wrong! It was great fun and I used ASL today during our morning circle time and the kiddos loved it! They didn’t follow along just yet, but maybe with my confidence and amping up my song repertoire, they will start to do the signs with me.

The first song I learned was “You Are My Sunshine.” This one is pretty special because it is one that I always sang it to my daughter, especially when she was a baby and needed to be calmed down.

The next song I learned was “Baby Shark.” This is a definite staple for any early childhood setting. The staff was more interested in the signs that our kiddos because they have their routine on point for this one already (including running like maniacs as soon as the lyric “run away” comes on!) and most are focused on their motor skills that they’re working on. Maybe the more we do it the more they’ll notice I am doing something different.

The coolest part of this song for me was that it focuses on female and male counterparts of the same family names, like how I discussed in my previous post. The sign for MOM/DAD and GRANDMA/GRANDPA were the same except for where on my face the sign is positioned. MOM/GRANDMA are on my chin and DAD/GRANDPA are on my forehead. The other cool thing about those signs is they are the same but you don’t move your hand for MOM/DAD and then GRANDMA/GRANDPA they are pulled away from my head, if I wanted to sign GREAT GRANDMA/GRANDPA I would make two “bumps” away from my head to show the lineage line, GREAT GREAT would have three “bumps” and so on.

You’ll have to excuse my super amazing dance moves here, but it’s a jam! I listen to this song at least once a day and have done so for the last 5 years haha. The moves just happen automatically while waiting for the music to start, enjoy! There’s also a really fun moment when it says, “let’s go hunt” that was like a patting your head and rubbing your stomach where each hand was in the right place but doing the actions the other was supposed to! Lots of really fun things to get used to with signing.

Twinkle Twinkle is up next for sure because it’s one of my little buddy’s favourite songs.

What other songs do you think I should learn next?!