Any time we do something pizza-themed [like this FREE VISUAL CRAFT], my students go nuts! It is so fun and motivating for them! I am able to target almost all of my occupational therapy IEP goals with them! Visual crafts are my go-to activity with elemetnary self-contained classrooms. You may have seen my previous blog where I talk about, at the secondary level in particular, I use visual recipes to address fine motor skills required for goals surrounding transition or life skills goals. They are both GREAT resources that can be used together or separately depending on the skills you’d like to target and the ability level of your students. I often tend to co-treat with speech therapy when using these resources as they also target speech skills! It is a win-win!
What’s Included?
All of the Simply Special Ed Visual Crafts [search by month!] Include:
- Step-by-Step Visual Directions with Real Pictures
- Materials Checklist (Need/Have)
- Craft Sentence (Cut & Paste)
- Sequencing Worksheets
- “Let’s Review” Survey
They also include helpful tools to keep teachers/therapists organized [which we all need!]:
– Teacher Directions
– Suggested Materials List
What Fine Motor Skills are Addressed?
Of course there are always ways to adapt the activities to meet all of your students’ needs, but below are some of the main fine motor skills I plan to target with this visual craft!
- Grasp
- You can practice pencil grasp with other utensils like paint brushes!
- Scissor Skills
- There are so many opportunities to work on cutting at a variety of levels in this craft!
- Build up from snipping to cutting straight lines to cutting shapes!
- Use adapted scissors if needed!
- Visual Motor Skills
- There are no lines to cut on, so many of my students need to draw their own!
- School Tool Use
- In addition to the items listed above, this craft includes gluing and writing! If paper/pencil aren’t successful for your students yet, you can use bingo daubbers to mark the answers on the “let’s review” survey, for example.
Make it a theme!
Who doesn’t love pizza?! Consider combining the visual craft with a math task box [FREE!] that also includes pizza-themed items! I plan to use my Melissa & Doug Wooden Pizza Play Food Set with this activity for my younger students. Since I have a large age/ability variety on my caseload, I plan to make a whole “pizza week” for my students! Some of my older students can work on kitchen/cooking skills and use the English Muffin Pizza Visual Recipe to make their own pizzas as well! I love all of the visual crafts and recipes — check out how you can work on fine motor skill using the visual recipes! You can also really target fine motor skills with the cut and past activities as well!
I’d love to see how you are using visual crafts in your classroom! Which are you and your students’ favorites? Did you adapt any of the crafts to fit the needs/goals of a specific student? Share in the comments or over on Facebook!
