I finally had the opportunity to get back in the art room and sub. I was lucky enough to be subbing in one of my cooperating teachers' classrooms so I knew the routine. Here is a quick one or two day lesson that we do with our Adaptive students.

Students are given a sheet of blank address labels. They use markers to color the labels. They then cut the labels into thin strips. Lastly, they peel and stick the labels onto a sheet of paper. The adaptive students often find the peeling and sticking part of the project to be very therapeutic.

I have been fortunate enough to work with Kathy Bareis over the last several years, including student teaching with her. She has helped to convince me to get my Adaptive Art certification. Working with these students of varying abilities has really opened my eyes to the idea that anybody can and should be able to succeed in the art room. Here is a project that I did with them right before ending my student teaching experience. We took large sheets of paper and folded them in half and then unfolded them again. We painted one half of it using cool colors. They then folded the paper in half, transferring some of the paint to the other side. We cut the papers in half. For the half that they initially painted, they were given string and several warm metallic colored paints. They dipped the string into the paints and then danced and snaked the string across the paper. Many of the students found using the string very relaxing. The different colors of metallic paint created a really cool feeling of depth. With the half of paper that had had the paint transferred to it, they stuck pieces of contact paper to it. Then they used slick/paint sticks to cover their paper. Some of the paint showed through the slick/paint sticks. After they were finished, they peeled up the contact paper to reveal parts of their paper that hadn't been colored over.