Autism Home Learning

Autism and learning difficulties and young children. For many children and young people, following a 'first - then' sequence of activities may not be the best way to provide information about their activities. In particular, children in the early years and children and young people who have autism and learning difficulties may not find this 2 step sequence meaningful. In this case you may be more successful by providing information one step at a time.  Transition objects are objects of giving meaningful information to your child. For example, a toilet roll indicates " toilet", a cup means "snack". Transition objects should be chosen depending on your child's understanding and based upon what is meaningful to them. If this is new to you, or is a strategy you have not used at home before, start by selecting objects for key routines of the day (e.g., toilet, snack, lunch, play, garden and so on). Start by selecting 2 of the objects which you think you

There are many resources available which you might be able to use/adapt for your child during home learning. Here is a selection, I will keep adding others as I find them! NEWLY ADDED : BBC Bitesize Parents' toolkit SEND  Parents' toolkit: SEND BBC Bitesize are delivering daily lessons for primary and secondary age groups: BBC Bitesize lessons see the daily schedule of lessons here:   Daily lesson schedule Widgit symbols 21 day free trial:  Symbol to support writing Resources with visual supports Lots of resources here:  National Autistic Society - resources This resource includes a few stories about Corona-virus, with pictures. Scroll down and you will find some fun activities, supported with pictures - a lovely resource: Stories and activities with pictures   Autism West Midlands - visual resources Autism Centre for Research - Covid 19 resources list SEND Essentials resources Loads of resources & great ideas :) DfE - online education resources for

An important addition to your home-learning structure is adding choices or free time. If your child is able to choose an activity and spend some time occupying themselves with that chosen activity, this may give you time to get on with a chore or, dare I say, put your feet up with a coffee! Choose time can be incorporated on your child's schedule . You may need to use different visual information from that used on your child's schedule to ensure they do not confuse scheduled activities with choose. For example, a child who has a written schedule might have symbols or pictures on a choice board, this gives clarity between activities you have to complete and activities you can choose. 'Choose' can be depicted in different ways, depending upon your child's visual understanding. This example shows how you might use images cut out of toy packaging to clearly show what choices are available for a young child: In this example, 'choose' is a hand-drawn

clipart-library.com Ben said: "I like my schedule because it is like a rhythm flowing." What a lovely way to explain why he likes his schedule :)   I am aware that for some of you visual schedules are helping your child with the order of the home learning day. An important element on the daily schedule should include time for ' brain breaks '. We know that many children and young people with autism have what I call 'busy brains'. This may be due to the way their brains process information, this may be because their brain does not always filter out the information which is not relevant or not important. They may be processing small details which would usually be filed in the brain as 'ignore' or 'not relevant'. As a result their brain is very busy all the time and can become overloaded, like a computer that crashes if overloaded. Imagine all the information is arriving in their brain through a magnifying glass. Brain breaks can be bui