Apple Tree craft

This week in therapy, the Speech Therapist, Denise, and I made this cute apple tree activity that she found on an awesome crafty website.  We modified it a little to do with our 3 Intellectual Disability (ID) classrooms.  We also decided to make one big tree per classroom, because of how difficult it would be to have each student make their own (we didn’t have enough staff to help with this and these students require hand over hand assistance)….plus it might get a little messy!

Supplies needed:

·        Red and green Tempera paint (and containers for the paint)

·        Green construction paper (for the tree)

·        Brown rough paper (or brown construction paper for the tree trunk)

·        One apple (cut in half)

·        Short handled forks or handles for the apples

·        Pictures of items on list for student to choose from (optional)

 

To begin, the speech therapist made the tree top out of green construction paper and the tree trunk out of brown corrugated cardboard from the art room (our art room has a lot of great supplies) and the art teacher lets us raid it whenever we need something for our students!!  :)

 

 

Next, Denise cut an apple in half and this is what we used to “stamp” the apple print on the tree.  With our first class we had the red and green Tempera paint in shallow, round, plastic containers barely bigger than the apple.  This made it very difficult for our students to pick up the apple, hold it and then stamp it.  They already have hand use difficulties and this was just making it harder for them.  After trial and error with our first class, we found some adapted forks with shortened “chunky” handles that we poked into the apple halves; this made it a lot easier to get the apple out of the paint, and for our students to hold and stamp the tree. 

  For this craft we decided to incorporate a fall scent to add some interest for our students.  After every student had a choice stamping the apple on the tree, we passed around a bottle of cinnamon for them to smell and then sprinkle on the stamped apples.  I tried to find an apple scent Jell-O but couldn’t find any :(.  Our students really liked the cinnamon scent and it was fun to watch them try to sniff it; one student even stuck his tongue out because he wanted a taste :)

 

finished project :) 

  





For this activity it was great to co-treat with the speech therapist because not only did we work on fine motor and hand use skills, she was able to target comprehension wh-questions with this activity.  She printed out pictures to answer these questions (red/green, bumpy, apple tree/apples) that the student had to choose from.

 

This was a really simple activity and a lot of fun to do!

I hope you try it with your students!