Making a Snowman - Collaborative Speech/SPED Lesson!

These past few Fridays, we (the teacher that I collaborate with and myself) changed up our routine! Usually we having a life skills cooking class with her 6:1:1 class, but we decided to do more of a craft activity instead.  Consistency in routine is good, but so is teaching flexibility - so changing it up once in awhile can be beneficial for our students with autism.

To add a literacy component to the activity, I've been using my Building a Snowman Interactive Book to expose my students to the vocabulary they will be hearing/seeing during the craft.  My kids take turns matching picture to picture for words such as: hat, scarf, mittens, snowball, etc.  Once we finished the book, it was time to make our big paper snowman.

Okay, so this craft had a lot of steps! I used board maker to create these visual sentence strips and broke the directions down to:

1.  Put medium snowball on top of big snowball

2. Put small snowball on top of medium snowball

3. Put hat on top of snowman

4. Put two eyes on snowman

5. Put carrot nose on snowman

6. Put scarf on snowman

7. Put coal mouth on snowman

8. Put two stick arms on snowman

9. Put mittens on stick arms

10. Put coal buttons on snowman

We made our snowman jumbo size, and added magnet tape onto the back of each piece thinking it would stick to the teacher's magnet board.  Maybe because her board is covered with paper, or possibly the magnet tape wasn't strong enough, but the magnets just weren't holding.  The pieces kept falling, which became frustrating for the students.  We quickly rolled up tape and stuck that on top of the magnet tape and that was more successful.  Once our students were done, we finished up the lesson by playing the Frosty the Snowman song/video on the smart board!  By using a book, hands-on craft activity, and a song, all on the same topic, we increase the chances of our students retaining the vocabulary they are being exposed to.  

Fun fact - the following week instead of having the kids make one large snowman, they each made a small one to bring home and show their parents!  Same vocabulary, different activity.

Happy winter!