Thursday, January 3, 2013

Wishing for Snow

Yesterday our combined academic-speech & language-OT group worked on a snowy project in the class for middle school students with significant cognitive and physical disabilities.

Our theme for the month--"Snowflakes, Hands and Hearts--No Two Are The Same."  I brought in recycled  winter-ish holiday cards and used the school's die-cut Ellison machine to make fussy-cuts in the shape of  hands and hearts.  Thought I could use aluminum foil to cut into shapes but that ended up being too flimsy.  The teacher had a ton of fake snow and pre-cut snowflakes, as well as amazing snowflake lights and other props.


 Shiny aluminum foil spices up the alertness level.  Gummy decorations are usually 90% off after the holidays so go out and snag a bunch for next year.
 Winter-theme holiday cards recycled into hands and hearts, then strung along the snowflake lights.  Next week we'll add student photos to the front of the cut-out cards.
 We used large switches with a switch interface to activate the light display.  The lighted snowman guides the  student's aim in the direction of the yellow switch.
 The lights stayed on for about twenty seconds, then it was time to hit the switch again.


Another student used his head switch to activate the lights.

We made sure to dim the lights in the room, and arranged the red background to reduce the glare from the transom window over the closed door to the school hallway.  All we needed was a little snowy music.

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