How Signpost Can Work Alongside Your Homeschool Program

American Sign Language is an appealing homeschool subject: it counts as a foreign language credit in most states, it is immediately useful, and it suits some learners who struggle with a spoken second language. The hard part is not choosing it. The hard part is teaching a language you may not know yourself.

The assessment problem

With a written language you can check a worksheet. With ASL, correctness lives in handshape, position, and movement, and a parent who does not sign has no reliable way to tell a correct sign from a near-miss. Video courses do not solve this, because they only show what the sign should look like, never what your student actually did.

What to teach first

Start with the manual alphabet and fingerspelling, then move to high-frequency everyday vocabulary before attempting sentence structure. Short daily practice beats long weekly sessions, and receptive practice (reading signs) needs as much time as expressive practice (producing them).