The Joseph Robert Shaw Foundation

Helping Children Recover from Brain Injury

When Collaboration Makes Us Stronger

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On Friday mornings a team of us meets over Zoom to plan for our inclusive pod and discuss any other concerns or pressing issues. As Thanksgiving approached we’d talked about how we wanted to do a project that dealt with thankfulness, but hadn’t found one yet.

The day before we met I spent time pursuing Pinterest for some of those beautiful crafty projects teachers post about doing for Thanksgiving. I found one from a Montessori teacher who had her children sew small hearts to give away at Thanksgiving dinner. Well, that sounded sweet and I couldn’t think of anything better. Instead of handing them out at Thanksgiving we could mail them to people we can’t be with this year.

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Art and Agency

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A few weeks ago, I posted about Joey’s monster. 

Joey’s mother recently sent me this picture, and I teared up. Joey’s great-aunt made him gloves with his monster on them. I was surprised by my tears. After all, it had just been an art project, right?

Art is a way we all express ourselves, though (like so much of communication) it involves motor planning and motor control. As children move through development, their art becomes more intentional. They understand the choices and control they can make as they work, and their art is a true expression of themselves.

With Joey, my greatest hope is to give him a sense of intention and agency. Art, and even somewhat silly projects like making a monster out of sticky felt, is an opportunity for him to do that. With the monster, he chose the colors, shapes, and the location of the monster’s features. 

Seeing those same features portrayed on gloves – remembering how he carefully selected each shape and color – overwhelmed me. Those small decisions he made – even where the arms ended up on the paper- are on the gloves for the world to see.

It’s a small thing, and yet, so big. 

My own children love the Make-A-Plate art kits, and love to color pictures at their grandparents that later end up on plates we eat off of for years. (And yes, my mother serves them food off plates that I made back in the 80s.) My girls take time on their art, but nothing like the painstaking labor Joey has to do as he makes choices and then must communicate those choices to me. And now, his art is also captured on daily items. 

So, to this aunt I don’t know – thank you. Thank you for taking the time to honor Joey’s art and capture it on gloves. 

 

Making a Monster (Art Project)

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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 built 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?

Not Just a Box: Exploring Tinkering with Joey

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One of my favorite new children’s books is Not a Box. Throughout the book, a voice (one assumes it is an adult) asks a rabbit “Why are you in that box?” next to a picture of the rabbit on, in, next to, etc a box. When you turn the page the rabbit replies, “It’s not a box.” This time the picture shows the rabbit imagining the box is a race car, a mountain, an elephant, etc.

It sums up my own childhood perfectly – no cardboard box was ever just a box. It was whatever my imagination could make it become.

Typically I read it with children before handing them an empty box and setting them free to create and pretend. Originally, my plan for Joey was different than that. I thought he would like the rabbit’s imagination, and it would give many opportunities for Joey to practice core words, along with some of his favorite nouns (like car and fire engine).

And it was perfect for this. It allowed me to model using the “not” button for Joey, which he does not use often. We worked on prepositions as the adult voice asked why the rabbit was in, on, next to the box, and Joey had the opportunity to predict what the rabbit would do next. It was a simple, fun read aloud with lots of engagement.

After awhile I started to feel bad. It’s hard to read a book about an imaginative rabbit and not give Joey a chance to imagine too. I’d brought empty boxes to play with, but typically I let kids decorate the boxes and get crafty. I hadn’t done that yet with Joey.

So the next time I came back I brought my arts and crafts box, determined to let Joey make something from the box.

This in itself provided us opportunities for natural, back and forth language.

“Should we use the big box or little box?”

Little.

“What should we make?”

Car

What color paper should we use?

Green

What shape should the wheels be?

Circle

How many should we have?

6

What color should they be?

Black

So we did. We used the small iphone box, covered it in green construction paper and added black wheels. (Once we started taping them onto the box we decided to stop at 4).

Joey LOVED his car. In fact, he loved it so much he said “love car.”

We got to play car. Joey even made the engine noises as we pretended to roll the car around on his tray. And every time the car fell off his tray?

CRASH!

I could ask, “Where should the car go?”

Grocery store.

“What should he buy?”

Cake.

“Where should he go now?”

Mall.

It honestly was one of the most fun and playful sessions I’ve ever had with Joey, who usually wants to work or read. And one of the times that he showed such natural five year old imaginative play skills.

Toward the end Joey said “Make helicopter”.

Eeeeek. I’m going back with some more boxes, craft sticks and dowels, but I’m a bit nervous about this…

Art Project Success! Using sticker-backed felt to give Joey independence in art

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Although Joey loves art projects I often struggle to find appropriate projects he can access easily. Painting projects always please him, but it usually ends up being a rather large mess and I can only get paint on someone else’s carpet so many times a month. Painting also tends to be over quickly and does not always allow him to be overly independent or purposeful.

To prepare for Joey’s upcoming beach trip we read Penguin Goes on Vacation by Salina Yoon. I wanted to do a penguin art project but black paint intimidated me, and construction paper tends to be hard for Joey to hold without crumbling or ripping.

Instead I tried something new. I had black felt with a sticky backing from a craft store, which I pre-cut into shapes for the penguin’s body. A circle for the head, an oval for the body, and two long narrow pieces for the wings. I also pre-cut foam feet and a triangle for the penguin’s nose, and a smaller white oval for the stomach.

The sticker-felt sheets worked beautifully. After I started peeling a piece of the backing off the felt Joey was able to grip the paper. He could help me pull off the rest of the backing. Once the sticker was ready to be put on the paper I handed it over to Joey. The felt was firm enough that it maintained its integrity even if Joey accidentally scrunched it. He was able to put it onto the paper (with my gentle guidance). The felt texture gave him a bit of tactile feedback, which seemed to make him more aware of what he was doing. He was able to put the sticker parts of the penguin together onto the paper.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have foam stickers for the rest of the penguin parts, but Joey helped me squeeze out the glue and together we were able to piece together the rest of the penguin.

With each step Joey used his AAC device to tell me what other body parts the penguin needed. When we finished, I used the device to tell Joey “I like your penguin.” Joey looked at me, the penguin, and then to my sentence that was still sitting on his device. He hit it three times quickly.

“I like your penguin. I like your penguin. I like your penguin,” he repeated, grinning.

Although his smile would have said it all, he was happy to use words to tell us how much he liked his work.

I’m excited to have discovered how successful we can be using the felt with a sticky back. I suspect this is going to open up all sorts of ideas for more projects in coming months.

 

Saturday Serenade

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