Celebrating Cinco de Mayo with Your Child on the Spectrum
We thought we would jump on the bandwagon and celebrate Cinco de Mayo ourselves! We love tacos here in our household and thought, “why don’t we make a craft that will improve our fine motor skills and also allow us to write down what we are thankful for?!”
We usually make tacos by selecting the meat of our choice. For us, carne asada has become our ultimate favorite! After we have chosen our meat, we place the meat on top of a corn tortilla, and top the meat off with a wide array of ingredients that can include cilantro, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and cheese!
Instead of making tacos out of fresh ingredients, we are going to make our Gratitude Tacos out of a few simple, crafty “ingredients!”
Things you will need
- 1 paper plate
- Yellow marker
- Black marker
- 1 sheet of green card stock paper
- 1 sheet of yellow card stock paper
- 1 sheet of red card stock paper
- 1 sheet of brown card stock paper
- Stapler
- Kid-friendly scissors
Directions
- Fold your paper plate in half and color the front of the plate with a yellow marker.
- Using the kid-friendly scissors, have your child cut tiny strips of paper about 1 inch in width.
- On each tiny strip of paper, ask your children what they are grateful for.
My daughter couldn’t think of anything automatically and asked me to give her an example of what I was grateful for. I told her that instead of me giving her ideas, she should tell me what she loves to do on an everyday basis that she hasn’t been able to do lately.
Instantly, she said, “playing zombies and monsters with my friends.” I asked her, “how do you play that?” She said, “We run around the playground and try to tap someone on the shoulder to make them become the next monster!” I then replied by asking, “do you love running?” And she said, “YES!”
Another question I asked her was, “what food are you grateful for that you haven’t been able to eat in a while?” She replied with saying, “EGGS!”
Even though she didn’t understand in the beginning what the word “gratitude” meant, she was able to understand more as I explained to her and narrowed the questions down for her to comprehend.
- Once we finished writing everything we were thankful, an adult stapled the sides of the edges of the taco together.
- Once it was stapled, we inserted our ingredients inside our taco!
This activity was very special to make together with our family. Many of us have been affected by Covid-19 and our children have been wondering why all of a sudden they’re no longer able to attend school, see their teachers, and play with their friends. Nearing the end of the school year, most of our children were already accustomed to a certain routine and structure that was suddenly halted in order to ensure our own health and safety, but most importantly, to ensure the health and safety for those who are most susceptible to contracting the disease.
Being cooped up indoors for many days on end can start to feel quite dreadful, especially for many of us that are used to living such an active lifestyle, and we can start to lose track of all the positive things that still surround us on a daily basis.
We know here in our family, we really miss taking our children to the park and sparking conversation with other people. But even though we are not able to do many of the things that we were used to, sometimes what really helps is taking a pen paper and writing down everything that we are grateful for at this very moment.
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