Autism Home Learning

Key to the success of new learning opportunities is STRUCTURE. Today's post builds on yesterday's & suggests tip to structure learning activities so your child is successful.  Home learning provides opportunities for your son or daughter to learn about new topics, learn in new contexts (home, garden, kitchen...) and to gain satisfaction when they are successful. We know that learning contributes to wellbeing, but for autistic children and young people learning activities may need specific types of structure for them to succeed and enjoy. Yesterday's post suggested ways to include new learning activities on the daily schedule. Today's post considers ways to organise the learning activity to make it meaningful for your son or daughter and to support them to succeed.  Many of our children have trouble organising themselves and their activities. Whilst the daily schedule shows what activity is next, they may then need some additional structure to help them to org

Today's post focuses on an important step to wellbeing - keep learning!  My first post on wellbeing emphasised the importance of identifying activities that give your son or daughter 'good feelings' and also their strengths, skills and interests. Yesterday's post referred to Caroline Smith's acronym CARES which you can read more about here:  Wellbeing - CARES .  I suggested ways you might provide opportunities for your son or daughter to have some control of their activities and to make choices. By adding 'good feelings' activities to the home learning day, and finding ways for your child to have some control and make choices, we can promote their wellbeing and happiness.  Promoting Good Feelings when Home Learning (2) Today the focus turns to another essential element of wellbeing and that is the importance of learning . The CARES idea includes learning in relation to:  Access & opportunity - to try new activities which your child may l

Home Learning has both advantages and challenges - for children and young people and for you! This post focuses on ways to promote wellbeing as part of home learning and as an important part of family life. What is wellbeing? We all strive for a sense of wellbeing, to be healthy, happy and to have a sense of purpose. There are many factors that contribute to our sense of wellbeing including: physical wellbeing - health, physical activity intellectual wellbeing - knowledge & skills to feel successful social wellbeing - our sense of belonging or being connected, communication with others, relationships emotional or psychological wellbeing - how we feel and our ability to cope with everyday life. Each of these is relevant to everyone. However, wellbeing is subjective, what makes one person feel good or well does not make another person feel the same way. Moreover, our sense of wellbeing is influenced by external factors, life events, the things that happen to us and inte