Eat Your Veggies

Eat Your Veggies is a tasty tale about a group of Veggies who met some tourists: Sweets from Sweetville! This app is a perfect introduction to a variety of vegetables and the nutritional values of each.

 
 

Eat Your Veggies is an original tale, told in ASL and English. We are proud to feature incredible ASL storytelling by Deaf performer, Justin Perez, with beautiful artwork by Deaf artist, Meeya Tjiang.

Justin Perez — Storyteller

Justin Perez was born and raised in Houston, Texas. He was a student at Texas School for the Deaf. He has always been fascinated by American Sign Language (ASL) performance art and storytelling styles. Justin started receiving offers and opportunities all over the world, including being a Visual Vernacular (VV) teacher at Texas School for the Deaf, the narrator for DeafVerse, ASL tutor at National Technical Institute of the Deaf, ASL model and expert with TRUE+WAY ASL curriculum, and many more.

Meeya Tjiang — Artist

Vegetables featured:

  • Kale

  • Cabbage

  • Romaine

  • Eggplant

  • Carrot

Kids will learn about the nutritional values of:

  • Fiber

  • Calcium

  • Potassium

  • Vitamins

  • and more!

This storybook app encourages healthy eating in a fun way, through dynamic and expressive ASL storytelling using classifiers to help designate unique characters and voices of each Vegetable featured.


Features:

  • 200+ vocabulary words!

  • Based on VL2 research on bilingualism and visual learning, this storybook app is designed to support young and early reading development through WATCH, READ, and LEARN modes.

  • WATCH mode provides full ASL storytelling to build reading comprehension.

  • READ mode provides page-by-page videos along with English sentences, and captivating illustrations to support and engage young readers. Tap on highlighted words in the sentences to view signed and fingerspelled words.

  • LEARN mode provides a full list of all vocabulary words: signed and fingerspelled. Research shows fingerspelling builds and leads to reading comprehension.

Built on the VL2 Storybook Creator by the award-winning Motion Light Lab team.

 

Examples of the Home Screen, Watch Mode, and Read Mode.

 

Download Eat Your Veggies today and let's visit Vegapolis together!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Credits

  • Producer: Melissa Malzkuhn

  • Project Manager: Conrad Baer

  • Story concept: Meeya Tjiang

  • Story by: Melissa Malzkuhn and Conrad Baer

  • Artist: Meeya Tjiang

  • Storyteller: Justin Perez

  • Film Director: MJ Kielbus 

  • ASL Consultation: Conrad Baer

  • Video Production: MJ Kielbus and Tayla Newman

  • Graphic Design: Yiqiao Wang

  • App Production: Conrad Baer and Tayla Newman

  • Special thanks to: Julia Mills and Lorna Quandt

  • Motion Light Lab Creative Director: Melissa Malzkuhn

  • VL2 Co-Principal Investigator and Science Director: Dr. Laura-Ann Petitto

 

Special Acknowledgement

Eat Your Veggies was built on the VL2 Storybook Creator by the Motion Light Lab team.

The material is based upon work supported by National Science Foundation, under grant number SBE-1041725. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of National Science Foundation.

This project was made possible by the National Science Foundation funded Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning at Gallaudet University.