CYBER SALE! ➔
Right before the holiday break in December, I wanted to incorporate a fun, hands on activity with my older students working on social skills before we left for vacation. I brought in a cookie decorating activity and the kids loved it! We did a thinking of you valentine’s day social skill lesson to work about thinking about others before ourselves.
Since Valentine’s day is just a couple of days a way, I thought I would pass this lesson onto my speech peeps in case you needed something with a Valentine’s Day theme for your lessons.
I wanted to decorate cookies with my kids, but needed to tie it in with “social skills”. So, instead of having the kids decorate their OWN cookies, they would have to “think about someone else” and decorate a cookie for a friend. This would help with teaching “thinking about others” and that people have different preferences.
I brought in different shaped cookies, 2 types of frosting and many different toppings. The students paired up with each other and then had to ask their partner what they wanted on the cookie. When they asked their partners what they wanted, they had to work on eye contact, body space, body and facial expression and making comments to show the person they were listening to their friend’s cookie order. Some of my students were working on asking follow up questions, so they had to ask “where do you want me to put the m’m’s?” or “Would you like a lot of sprinkles or a little amount of sprinkles?” We also targeted a little bonus lesson about manners in that you have to wait till everyone is served before diving into your scrumptious treat! All in all, the kids were very motivated to participate and it helped me measure if they were generalizing any of the social skills we were working on into a more natural setting. It was also very helpful for me to see what steps or parts of the social communication exchange was missing. What are you all doing in your therapy groups for Valentine’s Day?
