I havent been on mudcat for a while and someone told me about this thread. I sign songs in the UK using BSL ( British Sign Language). I met Pommes from Aus.- they do a song in Auslan and we compared notes - there are certainly differences between the two langauages and even more between BSL Auslan and ASL which has a one handed alphabet. We had some deaf children who came over from the West Indies who were using ASL and they were a signing choir going round the country demonstating as part of a christian mission thing. It was really beautiful.

In the UK children who have special needs but are not deaf mostly use a system called Makaton that has simple sign shapes compared to BSL.

We have just finfished our Xmas concert which involved 200+ hearing and 9 profoundly deaf children all signing all the songs. I work with a team of 5 others and we all discuss how the songs will be signed to convey the meaning linked to the music
- more like a dance I guess we then get our two deaf adults to assess it and hopefully we then teach it to all the kids.

One of the parents at my clogging workshop in the summer was amazed that all the children learnt to sign the song we use as well as learning the clogging routine. Research shows that hearing kids do learn to read quicker and remember things better with signs - I wish the same could be said of my deaf kids!!