Art and SPED By L.P.

Art is also good for building fine motor skills. All of the cutting, drawing, coloring, and painting help coordination and strengthening muscles. Clay is especially good for this, too. Work with some clay for a while and tell me how your hands feel afterward. It's hard work but they do it because they enjoy it. Also good for fine motor skills is beadwork. I often used things like keychains and simple necklaces made of pony beads as a gift the students could make for parents.

A word of caution, though, about some behavior students. I had a primary age reading group and had them make their own monster to go with "Where the Wild Things Are". I had a simple outline and they added features, then colored. Well, they finished and I hurriedly hung them up and left to go assist in a classroom. Later, I came back and another assistant had taken one of them down to show me. One boy had made his "anatomically correct", and definitely male. He'd colored some over it, so it wasn't real noticeable and I hadn't seen it when I hung it up, in the outside hallway no less! LOL! The other assistant and I had a good laugh over it and I learned to look more closely at their work after that.

Aside from that, don't hesitate to use art with your students. As I mentioned before, many are truly talented, it helps the students to express themselves, and eases some of that frustration.