Book review: BSL Halloween Signs - Colouring and Activity Word Book

By Cath Smith
Available from Amazon
Ages: 0-10

Reviewed by Allison, mum to Augustus (6) who is moderately to severely deaf and Elsie (5) who is mildly to moderately deaf and who both wear hearing aids.

Elsie and Augustus

"This book has pages to colour and also activity pages with quizzes matching signs to words. All of the pages contain signs related to Halloween. My five-year-old daughter really enjoyed it, particularly the pages where you have to fill in the missing letters. We looked at the sign for that word, found the corresponding page to see how to spell the word, then went back and filled it in. It was a great rainy day activity we could do together. My six-year-old son coloured a few pages but wasn’t as interested.

We don’t do much signing in our house so the children enjoyed the activities more than the signs but I can see how useful the book would be for learning vocabulary for British Sign Language and speech. The words were more complex than I imagined too, such as ‘goosebumps’ and ‘werewolf’, which was a definite bonus. The combination of sign, colouring and missing letters made this a versatile book that had something in it for both my children with very different interests. The fingerspelling at the back was a little too much for them to remember at this age but it’s something we can revisit when they next want to do some colouring as every sign can be coloured."