Good board games require quick turns and lots of thinking. “Gobblet Gobblers” is a perfect beginning game of strategy utilizing visual-spacial memory, assessing options, and setting up strategy. This takeoff from Tic-Tac-Toe utilizes hungry, wide mouthed characters to hop to an open space on the board, or gobble up a smaller opponent. Add a new piece to the game or move an existing one but remember who is under your piece–you might be setting up your opponent for a win.
Try this game with children on the autism spectrum to teach social pragmatic skills and concepts such as over/under, first/next/last, diagonal/straight, big/little, small/medium/large or tall/short. Language delayed children can benefit from learning these concepts, describing their actions and telling what if?
Gobble and giggle your way through learning!
See my full review of “Gobblet Gobblers.”
Playing fun, engaging board games with kids helps build social skills. For higher functioning children on the autism spectrum, games provide many opportunities to teach pragmatic language skills. Children with ASD like predictable routines (taking turns around the table, drawing a card or rolling the dice and moving your piece) and a set of rules (the directions for the game) which can be a backdrop for lots of learning.
I’ve had success teaching social language skills while playing board games with kids who I work with on the autism spectrum. I use games to:
- teach turn taking, and use language to prompt peers what to do next
- explain the rules to a new player
- follow directions
- wait their turn
- encourage others
- talk about what card they hope to draw
- talk about emotions when we are excited or disappointed in a turn or at the end of the game
Yesterday I attended a full day lecture by Rhea Paul on ”Evidence-Based Practices for Addressing Communication Disorders in Children with ASD.” Held at Children’s Hospital Boston and sponsored by the Department of Otolaryngology and Communication Enhancement, this program was excellent.
Rhea Paul, Professor and Director of the Communication Disorders Section at the Yale Child Study Center, is a speech pathologist, scientist and educator.
Dr. Paul began her lecture by stating that autism is a mysterious disease and parents are vulnerable to the many new treatment programs proposed in their effort to get the best therapy for their child. As therapists, we need to guide families to treatments that have evidence for improving communication.
Sharing criteria for evaluating published evidence, Dr. Paul compared different research and encouraged us to look at the chracteristics of the sample tested. For example was this treatment successful for children with a narrow band of IQ scores, etc.
She described a range of intervention programs available for children with ASD who are nonverbal to those who have conversational skills. Pros and cons were given for each program as well as an examination of their research.
Besides the relevant body of information I received, here are some of the points I took away for the conference:
- Autism is a mysterious disease and we are searching for answers. If you type “autism” into Google you get 18 million hits.
- Look closely at the evidence for treatment effectiveness or lack of.
- In the 80’s, 40-60% of children with autism never talked. Today about 20% don’t learn to talk. “We’re doing something right!”
- As therapists, we need to do everything we can to help a child with ASD learn to talk so he can have an entree into social situations, enhancing his capacity to learn.
- In her attempt to revisit the efficacy of Discrete Trial Treatments, Dr. Paul conducted a study involving “Rapid Motor Imitation Training,” based on a child’s ability to imitate motor movements. Improvements were fascinating.
- Match the treatment to the child and re-evaluate as the child progresses.
- Creative programs are available for the higher level child with ASD who has verbal skills–”Buddy Time,” “Scripting and Fading,” and “Social Thinking.”
- Social skills groups for the more advanced child with ASD are most effective within the school setting where generalization can occur
As usual, I picked up some of my most interesting feedback in the line to the ladie’s room. I overheard a speech therapist bemoaning the fact that her clinic or school had provided a consultant to her program for kids with ASD and the consultant was an expert in RDI so that is what treatment they used with kids with autism. We do get constrained by funds, accessibility to treatment training and time in the real world.
I had the opportunity to review a newly released DVD, “The Transporters,” developed based on research, to teach children, ages 4-8, with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to recognize and name emotions based on facial expressions.
This clever DVD takes advantage of the fact that children with ASD tend to like mechanical objects with highly predictable movement rather than faces that are constantly changing. Combining the two, developers created 15 episodes involving the six mechanical characters such as a ferry, train and bus with expressive human faces on the front of each vehicle. Sally the Cable Car is a bit bossy while William the Chain Ferry is quite dependable. The thoughtful dialogue is provided by the narrator so children aren’t distracted by the faces speaking but concentrate on the facial expressions.
When the little boy, Jamie, leaves for school, his toys come alive and transport the viewer to an engaging world of adventure, reactions and problem solving. The episodes graduate in theme from simpler to more complex emotions to recognize–from happy, sad and angry to proud, ashamed and jealous–with quizzes following the stories to check understanding.
As I viewed the episodes, I was impressed with the care that the researchers and developers took to select words and situations that named and reinforced emotions through clear, short sentences, exercising flexibility of language. Sally’s “happy” was linked with enjoy, love, laugh, friends, favorite thing to do, get there on time, good working order, helping friends, thank, and great friends. Varied phrases described the episode that capture the resulting emotion, teaching children language in many contexts. Nigel however was “angry” linked to stop shouting, didn’t say thank you, take more time, stuck behind, and forced to go slowly. Using the vocabulary associated with situations linked to an emotion and matching it with a closeup of the facial expression is an effective teaching tool for children with ASD. Children are drawn to the facial expressions as they change to match the situations described and explained by the narrator.
Backed by research, “The Transporters” has been found to be effective in teaching emotions to children with autism who viewed the DVD for just 15 minutes a day over a month period. They were able to identify and generalize what they learned. I offered parents a chance to use “The Transporters with their children on the autism spectrum. One parent whose child viewed the episodes said, “My 4 year-old son, on the spectrum loved these videos from the first time he saw them. He has recognized and pointed out my facial expressions for the first time and more readily recognizes expressions in books.” An added value is that his 6 year-old typically developing brother loved them too!
A 34 page booklet accompanies he DVD, introducing the characters, explaining the episodes, offering activity suggestions for teachers and parents and further suggested resources for autism and emotions.
Most impressive is that 25% of the profits go to further research and autism charities.
Parents of children who I work with are always looking for fun and effective products to use with their kids to promote their skills. One of the best catalogues of early intervention products I have found is “Beyond Play.” The products are clearly divided by category–early games, sensory exploration, fine motor, dramatic play, social emotional, cause effect, language, communication and others.
What I like is that they include specific products geared to children with special needs but also commercial games and toys designed for the typical population that are great for kids with delays and deficits. This allows kids with special needs to play a fun game with typical peers, with everyone engaged in the fun. Since I review mainstream products to be used for children with special needs, I was pleased to see some of my favorites, “Coocoo,” “I Spy,” and “Snails Pace Race.”
So if you are a parent of a child with special needs or an educator working with kids, take a look at this excellent collection of products for kids to have fun while learning!
As speech therapists we are always looking for new materials to throw in our bag of fun to keep little ones engaged and entertained. I use toys as well as books to change up the action. I wanted to share 2 books that were authored and illustrated by speech-language pathologists for use with children with special needs as well as the general population.
I Can Say That and I Can Do That by Dr. Suzy Lederer, a professor in speech-language pathology with 25 years experience, are wonderful therapy tools for children learning beginning signs, gestures, nouns, verbs, sounds and single and two-word combinations. Each book has 2 stories each as well as an interactive CD ROM for your computer. The simple stories are aimed at beginning talkers with target vocabulary of common nouns and verbs, repeated in short rhyming lines to invite the child to chime in.
See my full review of these effective tools for preschool speech therapy.
Let me know what you find helpful when working with preschoolers. Leave a comment and share.
Tags: preschool speech therapy
NPR ran an article about a new DVD produced in Britain called “The Transporters,” designed to teach children with autism to look at faces (like the happy baby face) and recognize emotions. With funding from the government, a team of researchers produced a series of five-minute stories about a gang of vehicles. Each vehicle has a human face, expressing an emotion–sad, angry, or afraid–portrayed by an actor. Since children on the autism spectrum are often fascinated with vehicles, the creators of this DVD took advantage of that interest and added large human faces that can’t be missed. Cable Car Sally or Charlie the Tram each match their facial expressions to what is happening in the story, and named by the narrator.
According to the article, “ A study found that children who watched the DVD for at least 15 minutes a day for a month became much more adept at recognizing facial expressions and the emotions behind them.” The DVD includes quizzes to test your child’s ability to read faces and emotions after viewing the episodes.
Check out the article, DVD Helps Kids With Autism Read Faces, Emotions by Jon Hamilton on NPR. You can click on a short video clip of one of the episodes. To find out more about the DVD’s visit the Transporters website.
I love to go to our children’s library and browse through the books. I use good children’s literature for all the kids I work with, whether they are working on sounds (articulation), language development, stutteringt or are on the autism spectrum. Picture books tell beautiful stories, build vocabulary, stretch their imagination, encourage storytelling, prepare kids for experiences and teach about our world.
I picked up One of Those Days by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Rebecca Doughty. A clever collection of simple “bad days” from “Annoying Sibling Day,” “No Fair Day,” and “Nobody’s Listening to You Day” to “Best Friend
Read the rest of this entry »
In Sunday’s New York Times there is a great article called “Bypassing the Roadblocks of Autism,” dealing with the challenges of traveling with a child with autism spectrum disorder.While most people look forward to a vacation with it’s new vistas, surroundings, food and routines, many families traveling with children with autism face a daunting task of providing some well-established routines to help their child feel secure. Long lines, masses of travelers, new schedules for eating and sleeping can throw off their child and make the trip less than relaxing.
This article chronicles different family’s experiences on cruises and at resorts where the destinations have made accommodations for children with autism. How exciting that after hotels and resorts began accommodating people with physical disabilities, that they are now tailoring travel experiences for people with autism. Families share their experiences of taking cruises on a Royal Caribbean liner (Autism on the Seas Liner) with special arrangements to bypass lines and large groups of people, eat together in a dining area and even participate in drop-off programs for the kids. Smuggler’s Notch Resort in Vermont has a program for children with special needs where kids are grouped according to development, so they can experience the greatest enjoyment out of the programs.
Check out the article online and the comments that parents are leaving–relating their own experiences of travel with an autistic child and even some good parent tips on easing the anxiety of travel. Kudos to the resorts and hotels who are going out of their way to educate themselves and their staff to provide a much needed vacation for these families!
I came across a video of a mom’s experience in coming to grip with her child’s diagnosis of autism. I thought it might be helpful to other parents as they face the possibility of their child having autism. On the NPR (National Public Radio) website (scroll down to the bottom) there is an audio show of the Brown family’s journey through their son, Gibson’s early years. His parents sensed that “something was off but couldn’t pinpoint it.” They didn’t get a definitive answer from their doctors and professionals. It wasn’t until mom took Gibson to see Santa Claus that it hit her. Her son wouldn’t have eye contact or smile at Santa and simply played with his beard. The insightful mall Santa asked if Gibson had “that autism thing.”
Now don’t get me wrong. Many kids–mine included–don’t relate to Santa and won’t look him in the eye because they are scared to death of him, but this was a last puzzle piece for this mom to seek a professional assessment.
So tune in if you want to hear a mom talk honestly about dealing with her questions, denial, and acceptance of her child’s diagnosis.
