Monday, December 19, 2016

Color Match the Flowers


This simple Animated Step-by-Step encourages young students to point to a designated flower. “Find the yellow flower. When the child touches the requested flower from a field of six, the correct choice is confirmed, e.g., “ yellow flower”. If the child points to a non-target flower, the negating audio, “ huhugh”  is heard. After the child points to the requested target,  a butterfly (of the same color) can be animated to land on the target flower … “A yellow butterfly on a yellow flower ” is heard.



Much like the I Spy with My Little Eye and the Helping Mister Potato Head titles, this resource combines both animation and choices on the same page. To allow this resource to function in this way you must activate the embedded animations at the level of the stars. Behind the flowers (the field of choices) there is a false background that has been assigned the action setting : Play Sound ‘silence’. If the child misses a flower target it will NOT prematurely trigger the next animation in the animation sequence. So if you are confused as to why the animations don't seem to be working, move the cursor up to click on the corresponding star. 

Supplementing this Animated Step-by-Step PowerPoint is an extension activity involving butterflies. In addition to the PowerPoint file this resource provides .pdf of the materials needed for constructing a flip book for matching colored butterflies. Adhesive male (hook) velcro is attached to the back of each laminated butterfly. Adhesive female velcro is attached to the faded butterfly on the right hand side of the laminated flip book.





Different disciplines use this resource in different ways. A Teacher, Classroom Assistant or a Speech-Language Pathologist might conduct this activity as a desktop task. 


The Occupational Therapist, in contrast, might use this activity creatively to add a little pizzaz to  a movement agenda. Given a butterfly match flip book, Kristin, one of my favorite OTs suspended the child prone in a hammock swing, and set up a task in which the child was required to select a specific butterfly from a field of two laid out on the mat, e.g., “Find the green butterfly.” After selecting the correct butterfly, the child was required to reach up using her core muscles to velcro that butterfly into the book held aloft by the OT. Don't forget a small pen light can be used to provide errorless learning when the child is selecting the requested color or it can be used to reinforce where the butterfly must be placed in the butterfly book. 

This resource is available in three formats: Regular (no symbol support), SymbolStix (n2y) and Picture Communication Symbols (Tobii/Dynavox). http://bit.ly/ColorMatchFlowers 


…’til the next post …  (new posts every Monday)

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©2016 Carol Goossens’, Ph.D.
Augmentative Communication Consultant
Speech-Language Pathologist
Special Educator