Aalto, Anne-Mari; Koivusalo, Minna and Tuononen, Emma. Playing with sign language – a memory game with sign language for religious education. Spring 2013. 70 p. 2 appendices.

Diaconia University of Applied Sciences. Diak Pieksämäki. Degree programme in Social services. Bachelor of Social Services. Option in Diaconal Social Work/ Option in Christian Youth Work/ Option in Social Services and Education.

The objective in this thesis was to create a memory game with sign language for the church to be used as a support for religious education when working with children who have special needs, especially in the field of language development. The theme of the game is Christianity and the vocabulary of the game contains Christian subjects. This written report is based on the game which was created in cooperation with Jyväskylä’s congregation. The reason why the game was directed especially at the church is that after graduating two of us are qualified to work for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. Because one of us is getting an early childhood teacher qualification we decided to outline our subject to early childhood education. The objective was to create a method that professionals could use when working with children with special needs.

The work to create the game was started in the spring of 2012 by planning the game. During the year 2012 we finished a prototype of the game which we then tested in various environments to get as much feedback as possible. The feedback was gathered by using a qualitative method with an open questionnaire. During this time we also did research on the topics that we think are relevant in this kind of production. From the given feedback and theory we had gathered we wrote this written report to support the game and our intentions towards it.

This written report contains theory about children’s verbal development and the disorders it can have. Also we gathered information on how to support communication with children who have problems in verbal development. We also bring out the meaning of games and playing for children’s development to prove why we decided to create this memory game. Finally we present the educational work of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and what is the church’es place in religious education.

According to the feedback we gathered it can be seen that the game is good support for religious education when working with children who have special needs. It can be also used for example with adults who have special needs. The prototype of the game can be easily modified in different themes. The development ideas gathered from the feedback are included in this report. The game can also be used when working with others than children with special needs. In the end of this report we bring out the development ideas for the game from the gathered feedback.

Keywords: augmentative and alternative communication, language development, games, religious education, congregation