Robot Craft

I have been off my regular blogging routine...and I don't even have a good excuse.  I have been obsessed with being lazy and doing nothing school related in my time off.  I don't know what it is about this time of year and how exhausted work makes me...maybe the 90 degree work days?  or the fact that I'm trying to plan for the rest of this year as well as for my new class next year?  Well...anyways, after being a lump for the last couple weeks, I am ready to get back into my normal routine again!

This week was very busy with a lot of visitors.  We often have people in our room to observe, however, this week we had a visitor come to actually interact with the kids!  Mr. David came from Camp Red Kite (a camp for kids with autism) to do an interactive art/drama activity with the kids.  They made robots displaying different emotions.  He started by posting these awesome picture directions that he had made!

Then the kids got to work following the directions to create these awesome robots.  He had them come up with names for the robots as well.  This was hard for some of my kids who just wanted to write their own names.  But after a few examples from other students, all of my kids were able to come up with names like "Doodlebot," "Turbo," and "Ross."  After they finished the craft, Mr. David had them come up with voices for their robots and had them talk about how they were feeling as the robot.  This was great for my kids since they lack so many imagination/play skills.  It also helped them work on taking the perspective of others.  Many of my kids carried their robots with them for the rest of the day, even after Mr. David left!