Greetings all! I'm here to report on how the first couple weeks of Homeschooling has gone for our sweet little one on the Autism Spectrum. I would like to share with you the challenges that i've seen so far and what I've done to try to remedy them to make this learning experience the best I can for my child with special needs. My little one, being on the moderate/severe end of the Spectrum, has days filled with quite a bit of hand flapping and stimulatory behaviors so as you could imagine keeping her interest can be at times, daunting lol. She is very shy and easy to scare away from projects due to what appears to be worry of failure. So since I am lucky and she responds really well to praise, I try to provide plenty of it :). She also has many issues in the area of fine motor skills and wanting for repetitive actions/self stimulatory behavior. As you could imagine, much of what we do in preschool is involving development of age appropriate fine motor skills and ability to follow a set of directions or steps. So these are a few of the things that I've found to help her in these areas:
1. Fine Motor Skills: Here are a few items that I've found that are really helpful in development of this area. I have found that the ABA therapy approach to teaching my child to be the most beneficial. I don't do the regimented ABA approach, but more implementing the idea behind it. I give her full prompts (ie. holding her hands and doing it literally for her) and slowly remove these prompts over time based on her confidence with the activity. It takes a LOT of time and patience, but it does come and she is so proud when it does! Many children on the Autism Spectrum have Sensory Processing Disorder as do both of my children so this is also something to take into account when jumping into activities. I recommend the book "Raising A Sensory Smart Child", it has been one of my favorites on the subject.
Resources:
-Playdoh-helps with tactile sensitivity and strengthens little fingers and hands.
-little markers-my child seem to have a hard time using crayons, perhaps due to the extra pressure they take to make a "mark" and have found that she enjoys markers and even with her light touch she can still make significant marks.
-Dot a Dot markers- LOVE these and she does too, it gets them used to holding a marker and even with low fine motor skills many children can use them with success.
-Finger Paints-this is a great one for both fine motor and sensory
Activities:
-cut and paste pictures: ok many of the first pictures you do are gonna be kinda crazy looking but they are truly beneficial. I of course cut out objects, generally centered around what we are doing and have her (with glue stick) glue the back and paste it on paper. She smiles so big and feels so accomplished when she creates her Art :).
-Dot a Dot coloring pages
-stickers on paper: simple activity but it does help them to use they're little fingers. Her Grammy buys her packs of stickers and we just make pictures by getting out a piece of paper and going to town!
2. Repetitive Action and Self Stimulatory Behavior: So those of you fluent in Autism are well aware of repetitive actions and "stims". I find with my child when she is stressed and/or over stimulated, frustrated, etc. she tends to go into high gear with her self stimulatory behavior. When I sense this is going on or see it, I find stopping the activity, followed up with a fun reinforcer to help get her back on track.
Our Favorites:
-Sing "If you're happy and you know it"
-Blow Bubbles
-snacks
-Sing "ABC song"
As far as repetitive action goes, I find it difficult when teaching my child a new skill because often times she wants to fall into repetitive actions. My first line of defense here is talking to her, this quite often is not enough. I then go back to the thing I use for stims and use the fun reinforcing behaviors. Once we've done the fun activity then its back to the school work. If she continues to struggle, I complete the work "for her" and show her the end result and give her great praise as if she has done it herself. This often times helps the light bulb turn on in her and she is better able to complete the activity the next time around. I find repeating the activity (haha) a few times during that week to be most beneficial.
Many of these things i'm sure most of you have heard of before, but I wanted to reiterate them so that you know that I am also doing these with my own child and finding success. So anyways hope what I've said is helpful lol. :)
I also want to share this ADORABLE photo calendar I found on Amazon that I find to be most beneficial for children on the Autism Spectrum, due to the fact that many of these kids are photo/visual learners and it has tons of full color real pictures! It's called a Scholastic Photo Calendar Bulletin Board and It's really big so great for little hands struggling with fine motor skills. I velcroed mine to foam poster board and screwed it to the wall. I then have velcroed the backs of all the days, months, weather, etc. so my little one can put them on the calender all by herself! My child doesn't have a solid concept of days of the week and such, but with this calendar she will have no problem grasping it over time.
That's all I have for now, I'm sure to have more as we go along, Hope all of you are doing well out there on your own journeys and remember HAVE FUN!
Blessings,
Bird :)
