After reading and studying the silly Monster Trouble by Lane Fredrickson, I wanted Joey to be able to create his own crazy monster. Art projects can be tough due to Joey’s limited control of his motor movements, but he always seems to enjoy them.
Whenever we complete an art project, I want Joey to feel as much control over the project as possible. The idea of a project is to give Joey an opportunity to form an idea in his head and then watch it come to life on paper. I don’t want to use any pre-cut shapes to glue onto a paper, because that takes away from just one more decision Joey has the opportunity to make.
To put together our monster (which Joey called “our monster” on his device) I started with a laminated piece of white paper. The sturdy laminant let Joey grab hold of the paper without wrinkling it. Then, I asked Joey to use his device to tell me what body part of the monster we should put on first, what color that body part should be, and what shape it should be. After he’d told me, I tried my best to cut that shape out of sticky-back felt. Joey was able to help me peel the backing off the felt once I got it started, and together we guided the piece of felt to the paper.
This was slow going, and the monster took two sessions to complete because Joey would easily get bored if we worked straight through on the monster.
However, by the
second session, Joey had the drill down. He independently build the phrases to tell me what he wanted. “Heart nose blue”, “rectangle legs green.”“Red mouth” “Black teeth”.
It was exciting to see him take ownership of the project on the second day, and use his words to direct me. It never would have occurred to make to make a heart nose, or do a mouth and teeth, but I think his monster looks great, don’t you?
