Special Needs in Art Education

Since I began my teaching career, I have always worked with students of all different learning styles, and learning speeds. I have worked with students who have a wide range of diagnoses, Autism, LD, Emotional Behavioral, Learning Support, and Multiple Disabilities. I must say that working with my special needs students are among the best experiences of my teaching career. Some of my students are very limited in what they can do, yet, in my classroom its as if the possibilities are endless, they can accomplish anything they put their minds to! 

My philosophy when it comes to special needs in art education is simply this: it is about the process, not the product. As artist's we all have this picture of what something will look like in our heads before we actually get started. With some of my special needs students, they are there for the experience of making art, not necessairily for what the outcome is. After they go through the process of making the art, working on fine motor skills, they are able to see the product, and they get so excited to see what they were able to create. 

In my art ed experience, I have never seen a curriculum specifically designed for my special needs students, so I have begun to develop one. It is always a work in progress, constantly being added to, as I am always experiencing students with different needs and abilities. 

Here are a few of my more successful project outcomes:
I tend to break my lesson Ideas into different units, ex: squares, circles, triangles, fall, process, specific colors, etc. 


First up is circles. We practice the 'round and round' motion that our arm or wrist makes when we are creating a circle. We create lots of different types of circles using lots of different media. 

This project involves gluing pre-cut circles to a 12x12 piece of paper. Students then use a toilet paper roll and black paint to stamp black circles on the colored pre-cut circles. lastly we use dot markers to add a little something else to our project. 

For this project we look at Kandinsky's circle painting and we use a 12x18 piece of white paper and divide it into 6 sections. we work on folding skills to divide our paper. We then use three different colors of paint to create concentric circles in each of the 6 spaces. Lastly we cut (depending on the level of ability of the student) and glue them to a larger piece of colored paper.

Some of our other circle projects include using different materials to create that 'round and round' morion, like chalk, marker and paint. We learn about oil pastel resist when it comes to watercolor and other water paints.

Next up: Squares.

We look at the work of Mondrian and glue pre-cut red, yellow, and blue squares and rectangles to a piece of 12x18 paper. We use a piece of cardboard to create vertical and horizontal stamped lines using black tempera paint. 

Another project we work on is laying painters tape on a piece of 12x18 paper in a grid pattern. Then we use different colors of paint to add color to the remaining spaces. I also use this project as a color mixing project to teach primary and secondary colors. 

The project with the yellow T's is actually a cube pattern that we use to make a 3D cube when its done. We begin by choosing a colored piece of 12x18 construction paper. I pre-cut the first letter of each students first name. Students trace a pre-made template of a cube onto their paper. Then they tape their letters into each of the 6 spaces created by the template. I place their paper into a copy paper box top, and students choose several different paint colors. We add paint in a few places on their paper and drop in a few marbles. Students pick up their box top and roll the marbles around through the paint. When it dries, we remove the taped down letters. cut out the template, fold it, and tape it together to create the cube. 

Next up: Triangles.

We complete several tape resist paintings practicing laying the tape down in a triangle pattern. We use paint for one and dot markers for the other.

 We complete an analogous color scheme process painting, and then use our scissor skills to cut it into triangles. We then create a mosaic on black paper.

 This one is a multi step project. We use tissue paper and modpodge to fill different sized square and rectangle papers. We use a light blue piece of 18x24 piece of construction paper and paint a snowy scene. Students use bundled qtips to make the snow in the sky. Lastly we cut triangles out of the tissue paper squares and rectangles, and add them to the paper. 


Our Fall projects include print making, stamping, leaf rubbing with crayons, painting, gluing and resists.

Our process art is constantly changing and these are usually the most successful. 

We focus on particular colors and create various projects using a monochromatice scheme. Marble paintings (which we did around valentines day so we used a heart theme) Apple prints, torn paper collages and tissue paper collages. 

 I try to hang up most of their art by their classroom so that they can see it when they go to and from different places in the building, but I also include their work in with the rest of the student body around the building.