A fun and simple exercise for students with learning disabilities is to create spirals and circular movements. A meditative and calming exercise, it release stress. It may be surprising to know that a learning environment can be stressful for some people. Learning new things with strangers can be stressful: the pressure, the inability to execute or learn things and the terror of the consequence, etc. can be relieved by doodling or by simply rolling the arms in the air or shaking the hands.
Instead of drawing, images can be captured by forming shapes using other geometric shapes. In the session below for a child with autism, I cut out shapes like circles and squares to form a tree using colored glossy brochures (I do not throw them but keep and recycle them for this purpose!)
Autistic kids can easily grasp the exercise although they may appear distracted. I check this by making him segregate the squares and circles (90% accuracy) or to choose colors (50% accuracy rate) to select and paste on paper. Note: green color (paper used) lowers the serotonin and makes us calm and relax.
And to go a step further, why not a blue flower:
I prepared four cut flower shapes which can be assembled by pasting the circular core (a good exercise for coordination) and for 3D effects, to fold the first layer of petals to make the flower stand out! A lot of people (with autism) can clearly visualize the circle in the pattern even without lines which some normal adults can not.
And bright pink Desert Rose flower:
Someday, my student will learn to draw this flower just by looking at it. But it does not matter. What matters is that he can differentiate and construct the scenes around him using basic shapes. A very valuable lesson for children with special needs.
