Whether suggest a game with your Deaf friends at the community park or just want to hang out in the backyard with your kids, these American Sign Language (ASL) signs may come in handy:
Play: Make the ASL letter Y with both hands, palms facing your body, then shake both hands a few times.
Ball: Using loose open hands, face your palms toward each other, roughly shoulder-width apart, and then pull your hands out and bounce them back in a few times (as if you're holding a ball).
Swing: Make a C with one hand, hook the first two fingers of your other hand over the thumb of your C hand, and move your hands forward and back as if they were a swing.
Slide: Extend one hand, palm up. With the other hand, make an ASL V by extending your first two fingers, then bend those fingers and turn your palm face up. Place the back of your bent-V hand at the heel of your other hand’s open palm and move the bent-V hand forward quickly, sliding it on your open palm.
Trees: Place the elbow of one arm on the hand of the other. (Your elbow represents the base of a tree; your arm, the trunk; and your fingers, the branches.) Using the arm that’s representing a tree, twist your hand at the wrist a few times.
Flower: Using a flat-O hand shape, place your fingertips to the right of your nose and move your hand in an arc around to the left so that your fingertips are touching the left side of your nose.
Dirt: Make the flat-O hand shape with both hands, palms up, and then rub your fingertips with your thumbs.
