So I know Thanksgiving has come and gone, but I just had to share this adorable craft. Maybe you can use it next year! Unlike many people, I had to work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Thanksgiving week. I see my intellectual disabilities rooms with the OT on Tuesdays, so when I saw this pin, I had to make this craft with the ID classes! (The pin I used is “broken”, but I just used the picture as a jumping off point.)
My OT friend has a student with her this semester, so luckily we had some help preparing the supplies beforehand. Jackie, the OT student, pre-cut the paper plates and glued the orange paper to them. She also cut the “crusts” from some awesome corrugated paper our art teacher has. If you are doing this with your students, you could absolutely have them try to cut the paper plates themselves – maybe just draw a thick black line on the back, first.
Here’s all of our supplies before we started:
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| This corrugated paper is great for feeling “bumpy”. |
There is a slice of pie and a crust for each student. We used cinnamon, as you can see, but you could also use pumpkin pie spice. (We had used cinnamon before in an earlier craft, so it was easily accessible.) At the beginning of the session, we talked about what we were making and Thanksgiving, etc.
We poured glue in a suction bowl and added a little water to it to thin it out. The students used a wide-handled paint brush to spread the glue from the bowl onto the white part of their pie slice. This was great for following directions: “Put glue on the white.” Then we added the crust. We talked about how the crust felt “bumpy” and the orange pie felt “smooth”.
We used a slant board, so the clip on the top was great for holding the crust in place as we added glue and cinnamon to the orange part of the pie (our second step!). We told the students to “put glue on orange” then we sprinkled some cinnamon onto it. We, of course, let them have a good sniff of the cinnamon before putting it on their pie. I love watching their little noses twitch!
Last, we added a little more glue and a cotton ball on top for the whipped cream! Some students LOVED to feel the cotton ball in their hand and squish it while others hated it. Sensory needs/preferences are so interesting to me!
Here’s one batch of our finished products!
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| Aren’t they just so cute?! |
I also made a quick BoardMaker question activity for the students to do on the Smart Board when we were finished. It asked the following questions: “What shape is our slice of pie?”; “What did we make?”; “When do we eat pumpkin pie?”; “What color is pumpkin pie?”. My students very much prefer these question/answer activities using technology, but you could also make one using Boardmaker and a printed sheet (answer with Bingo dabbers) if you don’t have a Smart Board. Or use your iPad and the amazing app See.Touch.Learn.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I’m very thankful for the opportunities this blog, and all of you, have brought to my life!
