Northern Lights Adaptive Art Part Two!

Our next step for our Northern Lights project was to create the trees, putting our cutting skills to the test.  Depending on the student's abilities and the time available, I either had the triangles for the trees already cut out, or asked the student to cut the triangles.  We then folded the triangles in half, and practiced cutting on a line and stopping before the edge.

All of my students required the lines to be drawn in order for them to understand where and how to cut the trees.  About 2/3 of my students were able to cut on the black Sharpie line and stop when the line disappeared.  However, about 1/3 required an extra little visual prompt to stop at the end of the line before cutting all the way through the tree. I just added a small cross mark and used verbal or physical prompts as necessary to further delineate the end of the line.

(By the way, these are some of the adaptive scissors we used.  My green push scissors are frequently used, especially with students with severe physical disabilities or little fine motor control.  I hold and guide the paper, as they push up and down on the blue handle to cut the paper.  Other adaptive scissors that I sometimes use include spring-loaded scissors that spring back open and don't require the user to control that movement--they just have to squeeze repeatedly to work the scissors.  For students who are very close to full scissor control, just need help with placement, there are these with holes for the index finger to give a little extra strength and prevent students from wrapping their whole hand around the handles.)

Students cut 3-5 trees out for their projects and then chose somewhere to glue them down.  To aid in reality orientation, students would be redirected if they glued their trees floating at the top of the page, or in several different directions.  This is critical in this setting, to reinforce and teach concrete facts about their environment (in this instance, that trees grow from the ground and grow standing upright).  In other art settings, how students place the trees can be seen as creative control, but that level of abstract thinking is not appropriate yet for students at this level.  They did have creative control in where they placed the trees, just within 1-2" of the bottom of the page, standing upright.  :)  This step also took one entire class period.  Next, we add snow with some cool DIY glitter texture paste!  

To see the first part of our project, click here!
To see the third and final part of our project, come back on Monday!