Cooking Group for Students with Autism
- Kim Wiggins, OTR/L
- Feb 27, 2019
- 1 min read
For the past two years, the speech therapist and I have been co-treating a COOKING GROUP with two self-contained classrooms for students with Autism. The speech therapist decides what they are cooking and I assist with the motor skills and executive functioning skills involved. The class is divided evenly into small groups at their own table. We talk about the ingredients and the steps it takes to cook! I will bring copies of the recipe so that the students work on copying the ingredients or simple steps. Sometimes there is "down time" while waiting for one student to complete the task. Therefore I will bring additional fine motor tasks to do while they are waiting. No matter what, I always have the students wash the dishes! Washing dishes is a functional task that incorporates bilateral coordination, fine motor skills, and lots of sensory FUN! It's also a very important (yet...non preferred) component to cooking! Students are now helping during meal time at home! In addition, this is a great opportunity for me to collaborate with the speech therapist and special education teacher! It's an amazing collaborative activity and I am so proud that we are able to teach our students these skills!