art and autism - Social Skills Activities for Children with Autism

So many autistic children love to draw. Doing art with others is new to most of them.

Here are some art projects that emphasize the social potential of art – children showing their art, enjoying others’ creations and working together on various creative endeavors. Some examples shown below are projects that you organize from scratch yourself. Others are facilitated by free downloads from my website.

Autistic kids who enjoy creating art may be accustomed to doing so entirely alone – which of course is fine! However, they may have limited experience with the many ways that people can be creative in social contexts, viewing other people’s work and even collaborating on art projects.

In section A, I describe four art projects to put together on your own, each with a different social component.

In section B, I describe four socially collaborative projects that make use of my free downloads.

Section A: Four social component art projects for you to put together on your own.

Facilitating interaction between children drawing together

Children accustomed to drawing alone might take little notice of other children nearby and what they are doing.

An adult’s careful and tactful social coaching has the potential to transform this solitary, parallel play scenario into a more interactive experience. One way is to offer verbal prompts to offer a comment, compliment or question regarding another child’s drawing. Another way to do this is to set a timer to go off every few minutes, at which point each participant has to stop drawing, take stock of what others are doing, and make some comments or compliments. In both cases, providing simple written scripts nearby for children to refer to (if they read) can be very helpful (see the verbal prompt example below).

*You can download this prompt sheet via page 8 of this link.*

Organizing an art collection featuring individual works by members of a group or classroom

I often facilitated projects like this at a summer teen program that I ran for some years. With groups of teens that included many who enjoyed drawing, it was a favorite activity and really helped some solitary autistic artists to more fully appreciate the creativity of their peers.

Collaborative sign coloring project

*First, each child colors one letter in a sign.*

autism child art therapy resource free — *Then, you combine the letters to form the entire sign.*

The first step of this project is for you to prepare a number of separate pages featuring the outlines of letters comprising the words you want to display on the wall of your classroom, office, social group room, etc. You can draw the letter outlines by hand, or else type them on your computer.

If you do it on your computer, I suggest you select the font “Impact,” configuring the letters in white with a black outline. Make each letter take up one full sheet of paper.

Each child is assigned to color and decorate one letter. When you finally assemble the letters to make the sign, it creates a sort of entry-level collaborative art project.

I used this project often in social skills groups and a summer teen program.

Assigning a few children to create a unified drawing together in the same space

This is a fun project, but also challenging and potentially very frustrating for young people on the autism spectrum. It’s very worthwhile provided you set it up carefully and offer coaching and troubleshooting from beginning to end.

After clearly describing the scope of the assignment, you should post written rules that include language children should use and not use with one another while working together. It’s also worthwhile to enact instructive role plays in which you, the teacher/therapist, demonstrate “right” and “wrong” ways to verbally interact in a collaborative activity.

*Suggested wording for the project’s cooperative language rules.*

The finished project could end up looking something like these pictures below.

*A unified drawing of a shopping mall by a small group of children with ASD*

Section B: Four collaborative art projects using free downloads from the website

Draw a Pizza with a partner

This download comes with the worksheet and the rule sheet below.

If your young clients like drawing the pizza, there is a another very similar project for you to try, Draw a Cookie with a Partner.

Groupworld project for three or more children or teens

This is a more involved project involving both writing and drawing. The adult facilitator will need to get involved to a significant extent to mediate and keep the work collaborative. It’s easy for this activity to dissolve into a bunch of kids drawing and writing apart from one another, quite disengaged from their peers.

Puzzle Piece Drawing Sheets

autism social skills collaboration play therapy free

This free download provides several kinds of puzzle templates which, when completed, allow the participants to put together a puzzle representing the connection of their interests. It’s a great activity, but be advised that you will need to cut out the puzzle pieces in advance and that is time-consuming.

The next in this series is: Part 4: Coloring & decorating to add interest & levity to social & emotional learning.

Joel Shaul, LCSW

Introduction to series .

Part 1: Reasons to use art in social & emotional teaching. Some guiding principles & professional concerns.

Part 2: Assigning individual drawing tasks for social & emotional learning.

Part 3: Assigning collaborative drawing tasks for social learning.

Part 4: Coloring & decorating to add interest & levity to social & emotional learning.

Part 5: Creative use of others’ images and AI for social & emotional learning.

Part 6: Encouraging & validating the child’s own artistic expression in therapy & teaching.

Why should teachers and therapists have a child on the autism spectrum color and draw while trying to help them with social and emotional skills? Please see Part 1, where I spell out some of the reasons.

There are so many ways to engage children in therapy by asking them to draw something.

Here are a few examples from among the free downloads on this website and my published children’s books. Click on the blue text to access resources.

Head Outline Picture Activity to learn about peer interests [drawing option]

This activity also comes in another version requiring no drawing. In that alternative version, you use my prepared PowerPoint download and then copy and paste internet images into the head outline. When you try this activity, you select one option or the other based on the child’s preference and how much time you can devote to this project.

Problem & Solution Cards [drawing option]

Children experiencing multiple social and emotional challenges can feel demoralized by being the “problem child” all the time. One way to help is to show our young clients how to externalize some of their problems onto fantasy characters which we can help them to fight against. Then, we can show children how to create solution “hero” characters representing various ways children can help themselves.

This resource is also available in a much quicker-to-implement version in which you drag and drop stock fantasy images to create the cards. Which option you select depends on how much time you have available and the child’s inclination.

Light Force Dark Force drawing worksheets

This is an earlier version of the Problem and Solution Cards.

Seven social skills worksheets for children who are isolated

On a couple of these worksheets, there is an option to draw small pictures. When I use these worksheets, many kids do select the option of drawing.

Fantasy Obsession worksheets & checklists with drawing options

This drawing activity is part of a large group of free resources to help raise a child’s awareness of how they are affected, in both helpful and potentially harmful ways, by various kinds of fantasy and pretend. Given the option of writing down words or drawing, on this worksheet many children opt to draw or to combine both writing and drawing.

What I Should Have Done Different worksheet

This simple, one-page worksheet is designed to facilitate reflection and retrospective problem solving. Children, when given the option of drawing on it, frequently do so.

Page 1 of seven-page CBT Worksheets

When I use these worksheets with children, at least half the time children go on to page two and skip the drawing. Other children dwell on the task of drawing their face. This seems to help them to recall the incident and what they were feeling at the time.

Emotion Thermometers

This set of emotion thermometers requires coloring and there is the option of drawing small pictures.

Pencil Memories, Pen Memories worksheets

This set of worksheets is to help children to think about social cause and effect, and how their words and actions might be remembered by others for a short time or a long time. Children can opt to either draw, or write, or both.

Examples of drawing worksheets from my published books

My six published children’s books contain lots of worksheets, some of which involve the option of drawing. Here are a few examples.

Social cause & effect worksheet from Our Brains are Like Computers