Sunny Day Writing

It may be mid-December but it's a sunny day in our town and many elementary school students always write a morning story about the date, the weather and what they'll be doing that day.  But, it's not much fun to labor through all those words describing your upcoming day unless you can illustrate your work as well.

Drawing can be frustrating for students, especially when 2-D visual-motor skills present an extra challenge.  What to do?  We OTs can use simple drawing to help students practice pencil grasp, near-point copying, geometric concepts and the fine art of taking turns.

Instead of using two little pieces of paper for our step-by-step drawing, I drew my picture on a piece of scrap paper and the student drew on their journal paper, within faintly-sketched boundary lines.  We took turns drawing each part of the picture and the student ended up with a clear illustration for their sentences.

 Of course, it provides a wonderful opportunity to practice functional spelling when you label your picture.

Different student here and we're just taking turns drawing a seasonal picture.  I was intending to draw a tannenbaum but the student thought it looked more like a person.  Oh well.