We LOVE art therapy sessions in our class, and when there are holidays or celebrations coming up, we theme our sessions for them! This week we done a St Patrick’s Day art therapy session and the children LOVED it! Read on below to find out about all the different stations that we had in our session.
Colour
With our art therapy sessions we wanted to link them to colour recognition for our students. So, for a while, each of our sessions was just one colour. It helped our students understand about different shades of the same colour. Of course, we picked green to use for our St Patrick’s themed art therapy session.
Station 1
This was a hands-on sensory station. We cut up lots of green jelly and put it into a tray. Then, we hid gold plastic coins and shamrocks in it. Students used scooping scissors to scoop out the coins. Many of them also just went straight in with their hands and scooped them out.
Station 2
We got hold of a huge piece of blank paper and we put it across the entire table. Then, we provided the students with green pencils, green felts, green chalks, green crayons and green letter and number stamps. They got to choose which one to use and do whatever they wanted! We had a staff member stay at this station to encourage different skills like forming letters and numbers, doodling etc.
Station 3
We had 2 green trays on this station, so it was kind of like 2 stations in one. The first tray was filled with green glitter and different green objects. Students used their hands, scooping scissors and jumbo tweezers to dig around in the glitter and find different objects. They had so much fun, and this was a great way for us to work on language and vocabulary too.
The second tray was filled with green play dough and accessories for students to use to roll, cut and mould different shapes out of the green play dough.
Station 4
Station 4 can be seen in the photo that I have attached above. Every week this station is the most popular with our students. They’re just drawn to it. This time we used different types of green food to make shamrocks on pieces of paper with paint.
We sliced green peppers and then dipped them into green paint. We pressed them down onto the paper to make shamrock shapes.
Then, we used pretzels, dipping them into green paints and green glitter to form smaller shamrocks on the paper.
We also used toilet rolls, bending them into the shape of shamrocks. Students then dipped these into green paint and pressed them down onto their paper too.
The trick here is to use lots of different shades of green. It makes a really nice picture when it’s complete! This station is also a great opportunity for us to get my students used to different foods and handling them.
What do your art therapy sessions like? Do you theme them to anything? I’d love to hear from you!
If you liked reading about our St Patrick’s Day art therapy session please consider sharing this post on social media with your friends. Also, don’t forget to check out our St Patrick’s Day activities here.
