Shadow Drawing

This is a simple activity that you can take outside on a sunny day. Place toys or shapes at the side of a paper which is laid on the floor, so that the objects cast a shadow on the paper and then draw around them. This will allow opportunities for your learner to request for the items they need, pencils, papers and the objects. You can use motivating objects, or also objects that relate to targets you are currently working on or want to generalise (mand: 1-6M, 8-10M). If your learner wants to choose the motivating objects, you can still embed your targets in between access to the motivating objects. This can be done as a receptive or tact targets, by asking your learner to identify a object (LR*: 5-7M, 11M) by locating and giving it, or by labelling, for instance, “Look I’ve finished my drawing! What is it?” and point to object (tact: 1-7M). When you’ve traced around the objects you can colour them in, so your learning can request the colours (mand 1-5M, 13M), or ask your learning to label (tact: 11M) or identify (LR*: 11M) the colours. You can also embed intraverbal targets in this activity, for instance, “You’ve drawn a dinosaur and a dinosaur has… [legs/tails/etc]”, or “You’ve traced the bus, and a bus is a type of…. [vehicle]” (IV±: 8M (fill-in statements, or 9-10M answering WH? questions). A learner who finds this activity very motivating, may be able to engage with this activity independently (IP^√: 13M (for 5 minutes)). This activity would involve your learner imitating (probably) a very novel type of drawing action which will be good for generalisation and supporting other writing skills (writing: 11M). You can also expand this activity to encourage your learner to count out, for example if you wanted to draw around cars you could ask your learner to give a number of cars out of a group, “Give me 3 cars” and encourage your learner to count out that number of cars (maths: 13M).

Preceding skills reference to the VB-MAPP Assessment tool:

Sundberg, M. L. (2008) Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program: The VB-MAPP. Concord, CA: AVB Press.

*LR: Listener Responding. ±IV: Intraverbal.

^√IP: Independent Play