Today’s Sweet and Simple Therapy Idea is perfect for winter, and needs no prep at all! All you need is a piece of paper and crayons or markers. (You could also use a dry erase board or iPad drawing app if you want and save some trees!)
First, have your student draw a picture of a snowman. You can either have them draw their own, or work on listening comprehension, following directions, and basic concepts by giving your student(s) specific directions to follow.
For example, say to your student, “At the middle of the page, I want you to draw a large circle with your black marker.”
Next, have your student describe the snowman that he/she drew. (Personally, I love the Expanding Expression Tool, so I incorporated that tool into this activity.) For younger students, you can write down their responses, and for older students, have them write a short paragraph or story about their snowman. Alternatively, you could have a student give directions to yourself or another student (with a barrier between) to see if the other snowman came out like the picture.
For my articulation students, we brainstormed words with our target sound(s) that we might see around a snowman or outside. (In the example, we thought of L words such as little, lake, left, look, and light.) For my fluency student, we made up a story about our snowman while practicing our smooth speech.
What other goals can you think of to target with this activity?
Simple ideas are my favorite!
During my winter theme, I like to have the kids make their own play dough and then have them use their play dough to make their own snowmen. It’s a great activity to target basic concepts including first/next/last, top/middle/bottom, and big/little, as well as following directions, and a whole lot of other skills as you mentioned in this post!
I used this today for a student. We each drew a picture of a snowman then we compared/contrasted and described the snowmen.
This was such a good idea thank you!! I had left over plain white wrapping paper from Christmas, so I cut one big piece and spread it out over the whole table for my mixed group today. At the end of the session, we flipped it over and they had time to free draw as a reward (this group has a lot of behaviors and this was a good activity for them to be engaged).