Live with Meredith – April 8, 2025
Welcome & Announcements
- Meredith opened with warm greetings and shared excitement about the spring weather.
- Brief mention of unexpected snow recently causing cancellations but emphasized current pleasant conditions.
- Reminders about upcoming silent chats:
- Regular Silent Chat: This Thursday and Friday.
- First-timers chat occurs every first Monday of the month. Next session likely on May 4th (it is actually May 5)
Personal Update
- Kate, Meredith’s daughter, will join the 6th-grade band next year.
- Kate initially thought she’d choose clarinet but ultimately selected the flute.
Lesson: Creating a Springtime ABC Story
Participants collaboratively developed an ABC story centered around an Easter egg hunt. Each letter of the alphabet represented an action or concept:
- A – Wake up
- B – Sunday
- C – Hear eggs
- D – Running
- E – “Eeee” (excited sound)
- F – Eat
- G – Egg, stuff
- H – Hurry
- I – Think, idea
- J – Spot (finding spots)
- K – Stuff
- L – Place to stuff
- M – Stuff
- N – Stuff
- O – Look, good job
- P – People
- Q – Walking
- R – Ready
- S – Yes (holding basket)
- T – Hold basket
- U – Take off
- V – Look, running
- W – Stuff in basket
- X – Celebrate
- Y – Break open egg, open mouth
- Z – Yay (finding golden egg)
Meredith encouraged participants to practice, adapt, and personalize this story.
Q&A Session Highlights
- Grandson Sign (Doris)
- “Grandson” can be signed with “GRAND” finger-spelled or using initialized Gs to indicate large/big. Both are acceptable; observe and match preferences of Deaf individuals you converse with.
- “Ha-Ha” vs. “13” (Xavier)
- Similar hand shapes but context, placement, and facial expressions differentiate “ha-ha” (casual, expressive) from “13” (neutral, numeric).
- “Next Weekend” & “Last Weekend” (Bonnie)
- “Next weekend”: Sign “next week” then “end.”
- “Last weekend”: Sign “past” then “weekend.”
- Signing Bird Types (Eliza)
- Typically finger-spell bird types, e.g., “Bluebird,” but signing the color and “bird” separately is acceptable too.
- “For” and “Don’t Care” (Anisa)
- “For” generally omitted in ASL sentence structure; “waiting for friend” signed as “WAIT FRIEND.”
- “Don’t care” signed by swiping finger off the nose.
- Signs with Similar Handshapes (Deanna)
- “Girl” vs. “Everyday”: “Girl” signed once on chin; “Everyday” repeated motion on the cheek.
- “Often” vs. “Million”: Both repeated motions, differentiated by slight palm movement, facial expressions, and context.
Closing Remarks
- Meredith clarified the process for submitting questions and encouraged reviewing previous sessions for answers already addressed.
- Reminded everyone about upcoming silent chats and wished participants a pleasant week, appreciating the warmer weather.
