Paper Airplane Therapy

What is the activity:

Paper airplanes is a simple activity that is a stable for childhood activities. It is fun and requires many different functional skills to make and fly a paper airplane. It require self expression for decorating (if applicable), fine motor skills, and gross motor skills, coordination, and balance. It even has the ability to facilitate exercise within the therapy during post-throwing/retrieval stage.

Instructions on how to facilitate activity:

STEP 1 - Get 'em hooked!

• Grab the participants attention by showing an example of an pre-made paper airplane. Next, stand up and throw it across the room. You will be bombarded with "My turn! My turn! Can I try?!" This is where you state that they will be building their very own and will be having a contest to see who can fly it the farthest.

STEP 2 - Get 'em to write their words!

• Decorate their own paper with as many words with their "target sound" in it. Together, practice and drill the words at the word and sentence level. Once the therapist is satisfied with a large percentage of their sounds correctly, let the folding begin!

STEP 3 - Get your build on!

• This is where the students get to exercise listening ears and their ability to follow multi-step directions. Follow the folding steps right, and within a few minutes, that boring sheet of paper covered with 15+ articulation specific words will now turn into a lean and mean flying machine!

STEP 4 - Get 'em movin' and flyin'!

• The last 5 minutes of therapy could be used to walk to the gym room (or an empty hallway) where one by one, you can throw the airplanes. Only to jog over to pick them up, do a few jumping jacks to make sure the arms are ready to try again. Then throw the planes a few more times and mix in some more jogging and jumping jacks. It is honestly such a blast!

Who might benefit from this:

This particular article I found was related to speech/language related paper airplane therapy. However, this easy facilitation could be tailored to any population! Most especially children with developmental disabilities, autism, and at risk youth. It is something that can easily be done and changed to focus on different abilities.

Contradictions:

There were no contradictions to be found!

Materials needed:

Paper :) and an imagination!

Special Considerations:

The level of difficulty of paper airplanes can be modified to fit the abilities of the participant. The therapist may need to help/aid during the folding stage of the therapy, therefore, requiring the folding skills/knowledge for more intricate planes.