Silent Dinner

{ASL signs--sea turtle & "I Love You"}

How does it feel not to hear?  If any of you or a love done have experienced hearing loss, then you know that it can be a real challenge.  This is what our dinner was about last night--we had a "silent" dinner.

During dinner no one was allowed to speak out loud, instead everyone had to communicate using sign language and gestures.  However, to make sure that we didn't just sit in silence, I created a few dinner rules for our silent dinner:

1. You are required to communicate during dinner!

2.  You can use signs or gestures

3.  NO SPEAKING WITH LIPS

I left these rules out on the table to help remind everyone while we ate dinner.  I also gave each person a paper with some sign language on it, including the ASL alphabet. 

{ASL alphabet}

Our silent dinner was actually really challenging!  We spent a long time spelling out words and made up most of our own gestures.  It was a good learning experience to be in someone else's shoes for a few minutes. 

There are plenty of You Tube videos, apps, websites, and books devoted to teaching ASL (American Sign Language).  You could easily include a sign language video or book to help everyone learn more during or after dinner.