This blog offers ideas to help you make the most of resources that you have, or can easily acquire, in order to create a range of related activities for your students. Making several uses of the same resource, or sensory input, allows for cyclic learning, generalisation, and consistency across a topic or period of time.
This blog post is all about… Christmas wrapping paper!
Wrapping paper is everywhere at this time of year and it is possible to buy large quantities very cheaply! There are so many variations available, from the original brown paper, through festive designed paper to holographic, sparkly, foiled wrapping! Without doing anything, a selection of paper will offer a range of sensory delights.
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Matching games. A regular classroom activity, but this is a chance to take a skill that may be revisited many many times and must be generalised across a range of objects, actions, and graphics. Using the wrapping paper with festive pictures on allows you to cut out and make matching cards to play games with. Or you can unroll a whole roll across a table and secure it with sellotape. Then with marker pens, circle and link ‘two the same’.
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Purely tactile. Why not get a large cardboard box and scrumple paper up and throw it in the box? Scrumpling is such a lovely fine motor activity and of course, you can create a range of activities for getting the paper in the box – aiming at a target; placing it directly in, or perhaps if the scrumples are small enough, rolling them down a bit of plastic drainpipe into the box. The box, once filled can be used just to play with, or to find hidden objects. Have fun thinking of games to use it for.
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Sensory light play! The metallic, shiny, or holographic wrapping paper can be used with torches to create fabulous reflective light patterns. In a darkened room, direct the torches onto the paper and enjoy the reflected light. What happens if you cut holes/shapes in the paper and project through it? What happens if you scrumple it up and direct the torchlight on the uneven surface? This is a really fun activity for saying, ‘What will happen if…’
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Tearing and cutting! Paper is just fabulous when you tear it, the sound alters when you alter the speed you tear it. Can you tear it alone? What happens if you tear it with a partner? Can you tear a circle (shape of your choice)? If students are working on cutting skills then using paper with small pictures you could combine number work with fine motor work… Can you cut 3 trees; 4 snowflakes, etc?
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It’s a wrap! One of the activities that has produced the most hilarity over the years is the ‘wrap me up’ game. In groups choose who will be wrapped… sometimes it is best to choose a staff member first to allow the students to get the idea and make an informed choice about whether they want to try. Wrap the person up, use sellotape to secure and of course, take photos at several stages so you can make a simple animation or timelapse video so that it can be enjoyed again and again!
