Autism and Speech Therapy Activities during COVID-19
Are you struggling with schools being closed and your child has Autism? Are you looking for some activities you can do at home to work on speech? Well, you are in the right place! Here are some of my favorite activities for kids with Autism of varying levels:
PRETEND PLAY:
This is hands down one of my favorite activities and it is a difficult one for kids with autism. You can target language, articulation, social interaction, etc.
WORKING ON LANGUAGE?:
If your child is having a hard time putting together sentences or more than one word at a time, this can be targeted easily! Trucks, barbies, dolls, dinosaurs, superheros, kitchen play…I could go on forever as you can do this with any of your child’s favorite activities. For example, with trucks…you can expand your preschoolers language by adding onto their utterance. For example:
Child: “vroom”
Parent: “truck goes vroom”
The more that you help your child expand phrases, the more likely they will start adding on new words!
WORKING ON SOCIAL INTERACTION:
Getting down on your child’s level and integrating yourself in their activity will greatly help your child with social interaction. Your child will often not be interested you are there, however, the more you integrate with items they are interested in and are modeling what they are doing with their toys, the more you will be working on increasing their social interaction skills.
COOKING AND ART:
This works on some amazing functional skills for ALL ages. I do a cooking lesson and an art lesson in the middle school classes I serve. Cooking and art targets skills such as following directions, as well as works on language. If your child uses an AAC device, this is a perfect opportunity to integrate the device in the home! I love to look up free visual recipes on Teachers Pay Teachers and follow them with my students.
MOVIES:
Yes, as a speech therapist I am saying you can have your child watch a movie. However, they may not like you with my idea of movie watching. This is especially a great activity for older students. Let them choose a movie, but afterwords have them write a plot summary that includes all the important details (make sure they don’t google a plot summary). If your child is working on social skills, have them identify a problem the character is facing and how they solved that problem. This is a perfect activity for your child working on higher social pragmatic skills.
SENSORY CRAFTS:
There are too many good one’s to work on sensory skills, so I am adding a link to a site with many cool ideas.
https://www.diyncrafts.com/15322/home/parenting/30-diy-sensory-toys-and-games-to-stimulate-your-childs-creative-growth
GET OUTSIDE:
Outside play can be so rich in language and sensory! Work on social interaction by kicking or throwing a ball back in forth. You can add language like “your turn” “my turn” to the activity. Since it is getting nicer and nicer outside, the possibilities are becoming endless. Sensory walks through the neighborhood or your yard can also be fantastic. Practice picking up or touching objects with different textures.
As always, if you are in need of more information don’t hesitate to contact us at Next Level Speech Therapy, P.C. (contact@nextlevelspeech.com) or visit us at www.nextlevelspeech.com. We are here to help in anyway we can during COVID-19. We also provide remote speech therapy (teletherapy) if you are concerned and would like your child to receive speech and language services during this pandemic.
-Dayna Sanders, MA, CCC-SLP
