Adaptive Art Project

For this post, I wanted to share a project I am doing with my CI and ASD classes. I have experience working with special education students before, but in my new school, I have a class of 13 Cognitively Impaired students and also a smaller class of Autism Spectrum Disorder. This is the first time I've really had to get down and dirty with planning for students who have special needs. We started with a lot of cutting and pasting, my goal is to have students really work on those fine motors skills that they are struggling to develop. These skills are necessary for life as well as art class.
After students improved at cutting and pasting, we added painting to our projects. Now students paint and then use their painted paper to cut and paste and create a piece of artwork. The project below was focused on getting students to control their brush enough to paint straight lines across the page.

During the first class, we talked about all the painting we had done. I chatted with students about how we were going to be painting lines. We all practiced moving our arms in a line in the air and then with an empty paint brush over the table so that students had the correct motion down. Then students were given a piece of white paper and red paint only. They painted lines across the paper just using red paint. Then they put their paint brushes into water and got a new paint brush, a new piece of paper and some green paint on their paint tray. Make sure to pass out the paint brushes last so that they don't put them in the red paint on accident. Lastly, give them a new paint brush, blue paint and a new piece of paper. If you have some students who are more advanced, you can have them paint stripes with two different colors for each paper and use a pattern as seen in the first picture below.

For the next class, pre drawn legs, body, neck, and head on to the different striped paper. Now students can begin class by cutting out each piece. Have the students make a pile of their pieces as they cut. After all the pieces are cut out, have glue handy to allow the students to glue the pieces together. I used the glue to dot things and make it easier for the students.

Lastly, and this can be done during the second class as well, I had students glue on small black circles and blacked striped ears that I cut out before hand.

The students loved this project and they turned out awesome! I added a hole punched, yarn tail on each one after the second class was over. I think this project was great for building fine motor skills and helping students to paint in a controlled way. I love how much the students are improving and learning new skills!