I may have a Master’s of Science degree, but Speech Language Therapy is an art. Yesterday I was cutting my new materials for The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell. Instead of doing color ink, I printed several of the activities on color card stock. (I was so happy with that decision and felt less guilty about using up the color ink). When I was done, I was left with very tired hands and a stack of beautiful, inspiring scraps.
What to do with all of this gorgeous scrap paper?
As if I had planned it, during the next group I had we read Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I had forgotten just how colorful his butterfly was. I looked at my stack of scraps (no, I had not found the strength to recycle them yet) and they had a remarkable resemblance to the butterfly. So a therapy craft was born. And I didn’t even have to cut more materials this time! Perfect timing too, just following Earth Day and our conversations about reusing materials.
Creating the caterpillar
So we started by creating our caterpillar. We talked about cutting round circles, should we make him little or big, was this before or after he had eaten all of his food, etc.
Choice making to create a butterfly
Making the butterfly’s wings allows for choice making, color & size description, requesting materials, angle, and location.
Where does the glue go? How much?
We talked about how much glue to add (little drop or big glob?) and where to center it (in the middle, up top, or way to the side?). We only added glue to the center of the butterfly so that his wings could flutter free as a butterfly.
Caterpillar questions
The group was getting their WH questions confused and answering what and why instead of WHERE, so I wrote the questions on their paper.
Butterfly questions
This way, when they take it back to show their teacher and parents, there is a starting point for questioning/conversation on their artwork.
So hopefully you will have a pile of scraps that can be used for some inspiring art! Please leave a comment and share your experiences as well.
