ART THERAPY

Welcome to art therapy classroom!

You will find a small group of us students getting really creative. This class has no rules. That means, no coloring inside the lines. You got it! It’s all about our creativity at work. That is how we build skills and communicate our feelings.

You will find us working in traditional watercolor, but here we set the tone. We can choose to break the mold by making plaster masks, building wire sculptures, and use mixed media for starters.

Creating art with others is a social activity that requires communication, a skill we want to learn how to do better. Art helps us express ourselves and share our feelings with others. One of my favorite art activities is puppet making. The staff say it facilitates play with the child’s peers. Not sure what what they mean, but who cares, I’m having fun. Wow! that looks like fun, see you later I got to go.

“Non-verbal kids use different devices to communicate wants or needs,” says Gili Rechany, operations director at Shema Kolainu. “They do not have a way to express feeling or emotion. Art therapy allows the child to explore their environment. The kids can communicate things they are really scared of or things they love. It is a concern because some of the kids cannot tell us what motivates them. Some of the kids love art therapy so much because they feel a sense of security. Art is a form of communication.”
They also experiment with different textures.

Students have created attractive works of art by mixing different colors of chalk with water, creating a paste that can be dabbed on with a brush. Students can also mix mediums, like paint and crinkled paper or popsicle sticks to create a collage. This builds their sensory integration.

The therapist says “I watched a child come out of his shell recently through a sort of transformative art project. The boy began drawing circles on a sheet of paper at different speeds- fast and slow. Then, he crumpled the paper and made a ball from it. He then used the ball to play a game with his teacher as they tossed the ball back and forth. This game helped build the social skills of the child.

Making an art project can also help an autistic child foster a unique identity through their creations. Since some children enjoy playing with toy cars, for instance, they can actually dip the little cars in paint and drag them across the canvas to create rainbow tracks. They use their interests to actualize their sense of self.”