08/19/2026
What makes Signing Families different? 🤟
CSC's Signing Families isn’t just an event where families happen to use ASL. Every activity is intentionally designed to create opportunities for families to communicate directly with each other.
At our Kick-Off, families moved through stations designed around real communication skills. Families communicated, Deaf mentors modeled language, and interpreters were on hand if needed.
🔹 Build It Together — One person had information the other needed. Families had to communicate in ASL to recreate a hidden structure.
🔹 Choose Together — Families made choices together, asking and answering questions instead of simply pointing to an answer.
🔹 Guess It Together — Don’t know the sign? That’s okay! Participants practiced describing, explaining, fingerspelling, and finding another way to get their message across.
🔹 Play Together — Games gave families a natural reason to sign, take turns, react, ask questions, and interact.
And then we took away some of the safety nets.
During Gimme Gimme game, teams had limited opportunities to use an interpreter. During the Elephant Game, there were no interpreters at all.
Why?
Because Signing Families isn’t about perfect ASL. It’s about building the confidence to try.
We want families to learn that communication doesn’t have to stop because someone doesn’t know a sign. Fingerspell it. Describe it. Write or draw it. Ask someone. Try again.
Our interpreters are there when they’re needed—but our goal is to gradually reduce reliance on interpreters and create more opportunities for family members to communicate directly with one another.
Signing Families is about practicing ASL, learning visual communication strategies, playing together, making connections, and becoming a little more comfortable communicating each time.
📸 A special shout-out to K**a Visuals for loaning us a photo booth setup! It added something extra special to the day and gave our families a fun keepsake to remember our very first Signing Families event.
Thank you to all of our families, Deaf Mentors, staff, interpreters, and community partners who helped make our first Signing Families event such a wonderful start. We also missed the six families who weren’t able to join us because of the storm and hope to see you at the next Signing Families event. 💙
